I admit that I´m a little surprised about the whole price action surrounding the GBTC split.

After the announcement of the split the price increased by 12 % and now after the actual
split it increased by another 6 % as you pointed out. Maybe this is the same psychological
bias that was/is driving the rise of some high-supply altcoins. People just are more likely
to invest in something that appears cheap on the surface.

Besides, it is interesting that a single GBTC share now represents only a tiny 0.00101 Bitcoins.

I would recommend the opposite approach  
Send one PM to Cyrus. If he doesn´t reply after 2 weeks send a PM to theymos.

Quote by theymos / Source:

Recovering hacked accounts or accounts with lost passwords


I hope that you will regain access to your account @TheTribesman.

If anyone is interested in how these spam attacks were actually conducted take a look
at these findings.

Evidence #1 (a typical block full of spam transactions):
https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000182aabc399d2daec86b50d510701a5fd098793a4eadead4

Relevant statistics:
Block #470824
78 transactions
0.32951528 BTC transaction fees

An example of a likely spam transaction from this block:
https://blockchain.info/de/tx/91c66f0dc1f130646cad7ab1701d3e944d97549602f2804daaa3370eb44afccf

The block in question contains multiple of these transactions with a ton of inputs.

...

Evidence #2 (a more legit block):
https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000019ac8d7d0543caf8e3e02b2a350eea35eb92bcb961da7b2

Relevant statistics:
Block #470825
1752 transactions
3.4972579 BTC transaction fees

As some of you may have noticed this was the block that was mined right after
the block with the spam transactions.

If we assume that the fees paid in block #470824 are the typical cost for a spam attack you could
also do other interesting analysis (e.g. calculating how expensive these
spam attacks on the blockchain actually are per day/week/month). A potential problem could be that
some of these transactions with a ton of inputs could actually be legit transactions
(e.g. an exchange that consolidates a ton of small deposits).

I´m just speculating here so take this with a grain of salt.

Schnorr signatures were covered by a patent that expired in 2008.

Wikipedia:

Maybe being covered by a patent could have hampered the popularity?

Now that the patent has expired everyone is free to use Schnorr signatures,
which could obviously incentivize the usage of them.

I have also been doing some reading on Schnorr signatures and the resulting potential improvements
for Bitcoin and was especially surprised about the discovery that the usage of Schnorr signatures actually
enables you to increase the security of your Bitcoin holdings.

Correct.

However, I think that it is highly improbable that Bitcoin Cash will gain any network backing whatsoever.

Just take a look at the development of active BCH addresses:


Since the start of January the number of active BCH addresses has dropped from ~295000 to ~51000.
This looks like a dying coin to me. This is probably also the reason why the spam attacks on the real
BTC blockchain have stopped or at least decreased in intensity. With every day that passes it makes
less sense to prop up BCH and therefore attacks on BTC become also less interesting.

In order to be fully transparent I admit that the active Bitcoin (BTC) addresses have also dropped in this time
frame, but not by such a big percentage.

Interesting post.

His other reasons are valid in my opinion, but the one I quoted seems
at least questionable to me. Most brokers that currently offer trading of these futures
have already announced that the high margin requirements are due to the novelty of Bitcoin
futures. Eventually, these margin requirements will be lowered to a level that is comparable
to other tradable assets.

Additionally, this won´t really deter anyone from making profit on the
Bitcoin futures by manipulating the Bitcoin spot market. It may raise the amount
of capital that is required to do so, but due to the attractiveness of this scheme
(shorting BTC futures, dumping real BTC before the settlement date) and the enormous
profit opportunities no one will refrain from doing this simply due to higher margin requirements.

Apart from that I´d guess that large traders can negotiate better terms with
their broker, which probably also includes a lower maintenance margin or even
the possibility to provide the margin capital only in the case it becomes
necessary (=call for additional cover).

I was completely agreeing with you until your last sentence. Why do you think that they can´t control it?
They can easily shut down Tether using the same tactic that the US authorities used against
E-Gold (of course the central banks won´t do it themselves, they will let the usual authorities do their
bidding).

Take a look at my earlier post where I described how the Department of Justice and the
Treasury Department simply changed their definition of a money transmitter to a vague definition
that fits literally every business that is somehow related to money transfers.

Various outcomes are possible. It is even possible that Tether is completely legit and will continue
to thrive for a lot of years.

Personally, I think it is more likely that authorities of some state will put an end to this business.

There are enough precedents.

E.g. take a look at the history of E-Gold:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

Especially this quote:

The bold part from the quote could also be applied to Tether.
Additionally, it is noteworthy that these companies had previously cooperated successfully
with regulatory authorities and even that couldn´t save them in the end. Tether
has not really cooperated with any regulatory authorities as far as I know.

I could be wrong on all of this, but in my opinion Tether will eventually
end up as a successor to E-Gold and LibertyReserve.

Possible. However, I think this is the wrong approach. Let´s say Tether is exposed as a fraudulent enterprise and
the price drops of USDT drops to nearly zero. People currently have more than 300M $ of USDT on Poloniex according
to the Tether rich list. Why would the Poloniex cold wallets matter in this situation? They are under no obligation to
redeem the 300M $ of USDT for anything. The same applies to Bittrex, Binance, Huobi and so on in my opinion.

Let me illustrate my point using a further example.
1. We are in the November of 2017 and Bob decides to sell 10 BTC for 100k $ on his favorite exchange, Bitfinex.
2. Bob decides that altcoins are the future (poor Bob   ) and wants to withdraw his 100k $ to his favorite
altcoin exchange, Poloniex.
3. Bitfinex has no working fiat withdrawals at this point in time and Poloniex has no fiat banking relationships either.
4. Luckily there is this internet money called Tether.
5. Bob has read on the Tether website that he can "Get the joint benefits of open blockchain technology and traditional currency".
6. Bob is fascinated by this technology and he withdraws 100k of USDT from Bitfinex to Poloniex.
7. Bob dabbles in altcoins and after losing nearly all of his investment he just wishes that he could
turn back time to just keep his Bitcoin on a hardware wallet and never send them to a sketchy exchange.
8. After reading a post by realr0ach he rails against his fate even more, because even buying physical silver
would have been a better choice than dabbling in altcoins  (#in Physical Silver we Trust).

Ok, I admit that I got a little carried away here  

But the gist is that the cold storages of all the altcoin exchanges are not relevant for the
backing of outstanding Tethers, because they are under no obligation to give their users anything
for their USDT if the price of USDT decreases enormously.

Of course ideally even the Bitfinex cold wallet would be irrelevant for the backing of Tethers,
because the outstanding USDT should be backed by actual fiat money in real bank accounts.

If I understand your post correctly, you are making a mistake.

1. Total Tether issuance (USDT on OMNI + USDT on ETH) = ~2.3 billion $
2. Total BTC in Bitfinex cold-wallet = 140,443 BTC = ~1.63 billion $

Even if all these Bitcoin would belong to Bitfinex, which they do not, they would
not be enough to cover all the outstanding Tether at the current Bitcoin price.
You also assume that all these Bitcoin belong to Bitfinex, which is obviously not true, because
these are mainly user funds. If people sold Bitcoin at 3000,5000 and so on the profits
may not have gone to Bitfinex, but to other users of the Bitfinex exchange.

Of course it is possible that I misunderstood your post or that Bitfinex
has substantial cryptocurrency holdings in other currencies than Bitcoin (e.g. big holdings of
ETH or some of the tokens that they list).

Random speculation:
Personally, I suspect that they obviously
acccumulate tokens like RLC or RCN before they list them on their exchange.
It is simply too easy to make money by buying up a random token and then making
profit after you list it on your exchange (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUT-ULkWsAA9Pxt.jpg:large).

Bitfinex main income should theoretically be coming from trading fees and not from selling
Bitcoins directly.


This is exactly what many people including me predict what will happen in the case of a Tether collapse.
The prices of all cryptocurrencies on these exchanges will go completely parabolic, because of people
that desperately try to exchange their worthless USDT for another cryptocurrency.

You can verify where most Tethers are located using the Tether rich list:
https://wallet.tether.to/richlist

Usually, the USDT/USD trading pair on Kraken roughly had a trading volume
of 1M $ per day. Today the trading volume has already crossed 4.5 M $.

He was trying to say that there should be a cap on how much merit
you can award to a single post.

E.g. let´s assume a Sr. Member has 20 sMerit to spend. He gives them all
to an old post by Satoshi. Afterwards he has no sMerit left until he slowly earns
a few new merits by composing high-quality posts.

If there would be a cap on how much merit you can award to a single post he would have to
distribute it more wisely. E.g. 5 merits as a tribute to Satoshi, 2 merits for
a helpful post by a newbie, 2 merits for a post that contains a nice infographic,
1 merit for a meme that made him laugh and so on.

I actually think that is a decent suggestion, because it would increase the distribution
of merits.

According to the official Mistertango pricelist their Mastercard has the following limits
for private individuals:
1. Maximum monthly transactions limit: 15000 €
2. Maximum annual transactions limit: 20000 €
3. Maximum card payment limit per day: 3000 €
4. Maximum per ATM transaction: 1000 €
5. Daily ATM withdrawal limit: 1000 €
6. Minimum ATM withdrawal limit: 10 €

If you intend to make transactions for more than 20000 € in a year,
the limits are too low for you. Otherwise, the limits
should be sufficient. I´m not sure whether you can raise the limits
by being a long-term customer or by providing additional documents.

Another questionable merit swap:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=95437


User buzzkillb sent 20 merits to kingcarsen and received 31 merits in return.
I´d give them the benefit of the doubt here, but the posts in question are of
very questionable quality.


and


Kingcarsen has already been tagged by ibminer and Lauda for having several
alt accounts.

This was just a rumor that was spread by some people. It was also during the peak of Bitcoin
network congestion with 200k+ unconfirmed transactions. I could be wrong, but I remember that
the Ethereum network had similar problems with congestion during this time due to stuff like CryptoKitties?

I think there is at least a bit of truth to the rumor, because using LTC you could cash out your whole
balance from an exchange for less than 1 $ while Bitcoin confirmation times and transaction fees were through the roof
due to the spam attacks by the nefarious actors from the BCH fan club.

edit: I should clarify that I was talking about a period of time that was a few weeks ago and
not any current price action

Wouldn´t a removal of bad actors (let´s assume that Tether is indeed a fraudulent operation and not legit
for the sake of argument) from the Bitcoin ecosystem be a good thing for the long-term future of Bitcoin?
If the big nefarious actors (e.g. fraudulent exchanges) are removed from the market this would
increase the likelihood of the approval of things like a Bitcoin ETF or even better news like the inclusion
of Bitcoin into the SDR basket of the IMF.

Besides, this could allow a user like BobLawblaw to retire with a much bigger nest egg
if this pushes Bitcoin above the 25000 $ threshold (or even higher) temporarily.
This of course assumes that other exchanges will still follow the price rise of the BTC/USD trading
pair of Bitfinex to some extent (e.g. due to arbitrage bots).

How high will the BTC/USD price go at Bitfinex when all people will try to buy Bitcoin
in order to get their funds off the exchange? This could provide us with
a crazy BTC/USD price rise (at least temporarily) if this is indeed the end of Bitfinex
and Tether.

I remember that some people floated the theory that parts of the recent Litecoin price
run-up where caused by people, who wanted to withdraw from exchanges in a reasonable
timeframe during the recent Bitcoin network congestion and therefore bought LTC with their funds.
This encouraged new investors, who saw the LTC/USD price gains and piled their funds
into Litecoin, which also increased media coverage, which resulted in even more investors.

This could get really crazy if this is indeed the end of Tether.

Never a dull day in Bitcoin land 

You could theoretically short USDT/USD at Kraken.


However, the trading volume of the USDT/USD trading pair is pretty dismal and I would advise against
trying to short it. Due to the low volume the price can be easily manipulated and I suspect
that Kraken would suspend the trading anyway in the case of a strong drop based on the
recent (or new) Tether news.

A new CoinDesk article from today (as far as I know CoinDesk
has been very quiet about the whole Tether rumors so far):

Tether Confirms Its Relationship With Auditor Has 'Dissolved'


...


Link to the full article:
https://www.coindesk.com/tether-confirms-relationship-auditor-dissolved/

Given the fact that Tether has not announced a new relationship with an auditor, we probably
won´t see an audit in the foreseeable future. Irrespective of whether the Tether rumors are actually
true, this news will definitely fuel further criticism and encourage guys like @Bitfinexed.

I´d argue that altcoins are also better at enriching their founders.
Most of them will probably linger around for quite a while, but will only
trade for a fraction of their former value when the altcoin bubble finally bursts.

The real question is when this will happen. Many high-profile ICOs that raised
millions of $ will have to deliver results at some point and when they fail to do that
it could disincentivize people from investing in upcoming ICOs. On the other hand
it is possible that the whole scene grows so much that every disgruntled investor
is easily replaced by new people, who are getting into the cryptocurrency scene
due to the prospect of "easy money".

Regarding the Lightning Network:
People are already using it on Mainnet:
https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1

Of course the teams behind the various Lightning implementations currently
advise people to be cautious and only use the Lightning implementations on testnet,
but apparently many people are happy to throw caution to the winds.