It's been a little over two years since the last reward halving which occurred in the first decade of July, 2016. That means we can now officially start counting down till the next halving which is scheduled to occur in the third decade of May, 2020. But what's more important here is that there will be a lot of buzz and hype months before the actual event.

So let's recall the train of events that had preceded the last halving. In late August, 2015, bitcoin made its local low of about 200 dollars, and since September it started to rise and rose to over 750 dollars in June, 2016, just a few weeks before the H-day. Then there was a correction which many had been expecting as it was kinda obvious that people would be fixing profits.

Now, if past events are any indicator of what future holds, it is reasonable to expect that prices will likely continue moving in a sideways market for at least a year, with minor rebounds and corrections, as was the case in the second half of 2014 and first half of 2015 (now we are in 2014). Then, in the second half of 2019, people will undoubtedly start loudly talking about the next halving. These talks and expectations associated with the halving will most likely lead to a sharp price rise till the very event or pretty close to it.

The bottom line is that, these few months, and especially the first months of 2019, may be good entry points before bitcoin gets a lot of hype again. So don't miss on this opportunity, and get your cash ready today to jump on this bandwagon right on time!

Broadly speaking, we all are unscrupulous parasites in one way or another as we are ruthlessly exploiting nature without thinking twice what we leave behind us unless it starts to backfire (like with global warming, pollution, etc). But in this case we are all in the same boat, so it doesn't really matter who is to blame and who is to be blamed.

But this is different with the so-called hodlers. By these I don't mean early adopters who wait paiently until they can spend their coins directly without fiat. I mean those who bought bitcoins (or some other coins) and hope to sell them at hefty profits later when bitcoin gets universal recognition and adoption. So why are they parasites? The answer is simple.

Basically, they are expecting that the price will grow as they sit idly on their hands. But this growth is not possible without other people actively using bitcoin, paying with it and selling for it - all those people who help create real value of bitcoin. And I know what hodlers are going to say in reply. That they diminish the supply and thus also contribute to this growth.

But this is a lame excuse. First of all, they can't in any way contribute to real growth which is caused by genuine adoption. All they do is add up to volatility. Second, if their words were true, that would mean that more holding would lead to higher prices. In real life though, it means that a coin (in this case bitcoin) will get abandoned and lose all its value eventually.

Therefore, if we are to bravely face the harsh and unpleasant truth and call things their real names, these people who proudly call themselves hodlers are in fact hoping to get something out of nothing, to get a share of the common pie when they themselves didn't bring anything to the table in the first place. Sounds familiar? So who are they if not parasites?

I've recently read a couple of posts here, and it became clear that people don't quite understand what ultimately determines the price of an asset or resource. Many seem to intuitively think that being scarce is enough for being valuable and pricey, or even equal to being valuable and pricey. This may or may not be true depending on another factor which is always at play here.

And this second factor is called utility. These two fundamental factors determine the price of an asset, but none of them taken separately can say anything about the likely price of an asset. Neither scarcity nor utility can determine the price on their own. It is their balance that leads to a price discovery through market means. For example, an asset can be as scarce as hen's teeth, but it still might be worthless. How come? Because being scarce is nowhere near enough to be valuable. To have a price, an asset should also have or provide utility.

In this case, utility means usefulness for achieving certain ends, whatever those can be. If something is scarce but lacks utility, it won't have any value because it is not useful for anything. But utility without scarcity is also pretty much useless for receiving a price tag. For example, the air we breath has absolute utility, without it we would die within minutes. But it has no price tag because it lacks scarcity. It is abundant, so having more of it (so-called marginal utility) doesn't add anything to our well-being as well as wealth.

Well, this question is not so much about altcoins as such as about free and unrestricted competition between cryptocurrencies, by and large, bitcoin included. I think it is the first time in the modern history when it is possible to see how currencies can compete against each other without government intervention promoting one coin and trying to compromise another. If I'm not mistaken, right now we have over 1000 different cryptocurrencies. I don't know about you but to me it is an obvious overkill, a lot more than we will ever need, for real life. So how are things going to develop in the coming years? Will most of these currencies die out eventually and thus their total number is going to decline dramatically or will we always have an influx of a shitload of new coins?

What should we expect from cryptocurrencies on the scale of years or even decades? How many will be there and how many do we actually need?

Well, actually not so much doom and gloom but rather a "scientific" theory for a constructive and meaningful discussion. I don't claim that the proposed theory is necessarily true but with prices going lower and lower it looks like speculation is gradually subsiding and this is what makes ground for this theory. The current decline and depreciation of cryptocurrencies doesn't look like a short-term trend, which will be over in a couple of months. This is the doom and gloom part. The scientific part is that it is a natural course of events given that we are close to what can be called informational saturation. In simple language, everyone already knows about crypto in general and bitcoin specifically. If they wanted to invest in crypto, they already did so. If they didn't, they wouldn't, as simple as it gets. So what does it mean for us all? Essentially, that there is little hope for bitcoin to make new all-time highs any time soon or even just local highs beyond minor rebounds. Over the long term, we will be moving closer to the use value of bitcoin and other coins (if there's any in them in the first place), with the price closer to what it would be if there were no speculation at all.

Please prove me wrong but don't call me vile names at that.

Recently, I saw a thread around here (it got trashed already) which was a copy-paste of an article about the early history of Dogecoin and it being mostly a joke. I don't really know if it turned into anything other than (just) a joke since then, but to be honest, doges earned me hefty profits back in the day, specifically when Bter was at its prime (it's gone now), if anyone remembers. It was likely the best coin for arbitrage a few years ago. But those times seem to be long gone by now too (though I can be wrong on this, of course). Today, its active development is halted as the last official release of the Dogecoin wallet was more than two years ago (it had been released in November, 2015). There are signs (or rather sighs) of life at Github but I'm highly dubious if they will bear any real fruit. So I basically have two questions.

The first question is simple and pretty straightforward. In short, is Dogecoin dead in terms of active development and support as in left for dead? And the second one is more intricate and complex. Does Dogecoin (or any other coin, for that matter) have to be actively developed and have a strong, solid team behind it to stay alive and be in circulation? Really, if there are no critical bugs, there may be just nothing to add apart from what has already been added.

I know it is a very controversial topic (mildly speaking), so I ask everyone to be civilized and remain calm. All the coins that I heard of have either a fixed supply, like bitcoin with its 21M coins, or a supply which is determined by some algo. But this is definitely not what real economy needs. Modern economies are built around fiat while the amount of fiat in circulation can be changed in pretty much arbitrary way. If we discard the cases where the power to print money is heavily abused, this system works flawlessly (well, at least in theory). If an economy expands, more money is created by banks via credit, if an economy constricts banks give less credits while some money gets destroyed via defaults of the borrowers.

The point I want to discuss here is if we want a cryptocurrency to really act as a better alternative to fiat, its supply should necessarily be floating and depend on the needs of an economy, not on some preset, strictly deterministic algorithm, however sophisticated or complex it could be. How feasible is this? If you think it doesn't make sense, then what are your reasons?

A few months ago, when bitcoin transaction costs had reached almost 50 dollars per TX, there was a lot of buzz about LN just around the corner. Now that the price of bitcoin as well as costs associated with the transfer of coins fell dramatically, no one seems to be talking about LN any more. I don't question its technical feasibility, it is definitely possible. I'm more interested whether anyone will be using it given today's conditions apart from a few die-hard enthusiasts. Exactly one year ago LN had been activated in litecoin, but no one is using this technology for real with this coin.

So, where are we now with LN in bitcoin? Has it been abandoned and forgotten?

In plain terms, this thing beats me. I read it every now and then that bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies contribute to capital flight. The logic behind such claims is that someone can buy bitcoins for dollars in one country and sell them for the same amount of dollars in the other. This is the point which I never truly understood. To me, there is no real or virtual transfer of dollars across the border so there is no capital lost at all. No dollar gets lost or transfered.

Am I the only one who has doubts about this claim?

[Our idea is a universal tool that allows building artificial neural networks and artificial intelligence for the customers’ needs.]

BlockChain Neural System (BNS) is a revolutionary project in AI. It will fundamentally change the market and the availability of artificial intelligence. BNS is the world's first ever decentralized, blockchain-based hybrid cloud computing system. It works by employing the infrastructure of blockchain projects. The system is intended for creation and training of artificial neural networks (ANN) that are applicable to AI. Our idea is a universal tool that allows building artificial neural networks and artificial intelligence for the customers’ needs.

We offer:

• Complete automatization of machine learning (no need for the highly paid and qualified specialists anymore).
  
  
• Unlike Google, Microsoft or Amazon, our costs for AI creation and its learning are up to 15 times lower.
  
  
• BNS hybrid-miner app gives miners the opportunity to earn 25% more than in case of mining other cryptocurrencies.
  
  
• BNS SmartStore is the world's first ever decentralized, fault-tolerant counterpart of App Store and Google Play. It is filled with AI smart applications and services built using BNS.
  
  
• BNS provides huge computing power for AI and ANN learning. The available computing power is 20 times higher than that of all supercomputers in the world.
  
  
• BNS enables both organizations and ordinary users to create and train their own ANNs and AI through our service for their specific tasks.
  
  
• Our technical and economic models are built in such a way that any organization and everyone can use our service without spending extensive (significant) resources, both financial and human.
  
  
• Decentralization and anonymity are ensured through the use of smart contracts, thereby ensuring complete independence and autonomy of BNS from anyone. BNS is a completely self-contained system with a public interface. This means that anyone can create smart applications without restrictions and control, without fear of censorship or sudden shutdown.

Research into competitors' prices






How BNS works for the client

A client who needs to create an AI and train his own ANN should take only a few steps:

For our customers’ convenience, the contacts and details of BNS-certified specialists will be given on our website.




How BNS works for the providers of graphics card processing power


The economic model being developed by us will allow to pay rewards exceeding the income from ordinary mining of cryptocurrencies.




How BNS works for the smart-application developers



Even 5% of the Ethereum network processing capacity is enough to create one supercomputer that would be much more powerful than all existing supercomputers combined!




What's the outcome?

Nowadays there is no project or any organization using all the three aspects of machine learning. Due to uniting all of them, we can make the process much faster than it is right now. We see the future where AI development is completely decentralized and anonymous (which means that customers’ private data will not be held on any corporate servers).

The customer won’t need to create the ecosystem for every particular AI. The only thing he or she will need is to import the training set to the BNS server. All that makes Blockchain Neural System (BNS) absolutely unique and revolutionary project!




Outlook

The Strategic Initiatives Agency (SIA) has already expressed interest in the offered technology of distributed machine learning. The same about such organizations as ITMO University (like MIT in US) and Skolkovo (like Silicon Valley).
We are sure that our project is an enormous contribution to the technological progress in general and AI development in particular.




Token sale structure

Abbreviation: BNS
Token design: completely utilitarian as a payment for the BNS services. The BNS token is not a security and not subject to securities regulations.
Token standard: Ethereum ERC-20
Total issuance: 100,000,000  BNS tokens
Base price: 1 Ethereum (ETH) = 800 BNS tokens
Available: bounty, affiliate and discount programs

Distribution:
Total issuance of the tokens is limited by the smart contract to 100,000,000 BNS tokens
5,000,000 BNS tokens – presale
5,000,000 BNS tokens – preliminary token sale
70,000,000 BNS tokens – main token sale
10,000,000 BNS tokens – for the BNS development team
4,000,000 BNS tokens – for the BNS project development fund
4,000,000 BNS tokens – for advisers and consultants of the BNS project
2,000,000 BNS tokens – for bounty campaign

I have found myself in the SMAS black list here. My post history is open to everyone, so I invite the SMAS managers to explain in the open the exact reasons why I've been added to this list. Thank you.

That question has always been intriguing me. Reading about possible control over Bitcoin by the government, I thought about the ways how they could actually do it. One idea that came to my mind was to print enough fiat to buy all bitcoins existing and get done with it for good. But then I recalled about the top Bitcoin holders including Satoshi himself keeping their coins, and it struck me that they might not be selling their stashes just because of this, for the fear that government could easily buy up all bitcoins that are traded and turn into the biggest whale itself.

How likely is that?

Among his many campaign promises as a candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump has also been promising to close the US markets for the Chinese goods, at least partially. That, according to him, will help restore American jobs that he accused China of stealing. If he ever lives up to his promises and actually does something to that tune, it will certainly cause further devaluation of Yuan, the national currency of China. But the Yuan devaluation seems to be one of the primary drivers behind the growth of Bitcoin for the last two years, along with the reward halving.

What are your opinions on the consequences of his economic policy in regard to Bitcoin and its price in the long term?

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

Full-body transplants will be possible within two years, says controversial surgeon Sergio Canavero

The world’s first full-body transplant – in which someone’s head would be sewn onto a donor body – could take place in just two years, according to a controversial surgeon.

Mr Canavero said: “I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible. If society doesn't want it, I won't do it. But if people don't want it in the US or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else. I'm trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you

A worthy comment from the site:

Soon we will see 'rich wise heads on young shoulders'. Now the Western oligarchs will finally find some use for the younger poor and disadvantaged (So long as they have a healthy body)

What do you guys think?

With the recent fall of so many cryptocurrency exchanges I was thinking about feasibility of making trades safe.

So I came up with the following idea. We create some metacoin with the single purpose of making its blockchain a decentralised exchange for trading other major coins. How this would work in practice. Say, you want to sell a few bitcoins and get some doges. You send your bitcoins to a randomly generated address whose private key is distributed across (encrypted in) this metacoin blockchain. The private key could only be made available to whoever sells you dogecoins at the price which will be set in the transaction you sign on this meta blockchain. For the buyer of your bitcoins the process should be pretty much the same.

Is it possible to make such a "coin", which client would serve as a trading platform?

Bter has just opened after it had been hacked February, 14. Presently only CNY, USD and NXT balances are available for withdrawal.