Ok, now your post makes more sense.

Basically my argument boils down to the trading volume rankings. If all available exchanges were operating perfectly innocuous the trading volume ranking would
be lead by GDax/Coinbase (by far the biggest user base, caters to the biggest markets in the world except China) and Bitstamp (one of the oldest operators with a nearly flawless track record (nearly, because they
also suffered a hack back in the day)).

The fact that Bitfinex and Bithumb are at the top can´t be easily explained. Keep in mind that one of them even lost banking for 7 months and just recently
added a few payment gateways and the other one caters mainly (or even exclusively) to the Korean market.

...

I also don´t want to derail nrd525´s thread  

However, please tell me what exactly my motive is? I have been using Bitfinex (mainly for lending USD) for nearly 3 years and only
recently stopped doing so, because of the developments surrounding Tether and BFX. Therefore I don´t really know why exactly I have a motive for posting bad things about Bitfinex.
I´m not like @Bitfinexed, who obviously has a personal vendetta against BFX. In fact I would be happy if all my claims were proven to be false,
because of the fatal impact on the whole Bitcoin ecosystem if Bitfinex is going to fail / be shut down by US law enforcement.

Take a look at the biggest Bitcoin exchanges by volume.
The top 2 exchanges are Bitfinex and Bithumb (this has been the situation for quite a while).

One of these got hacked in a very dubious way and has a history of not delivering on
audits. Instead of entering a slow decline - the development that should occur after suffering a serious hack
and never delivering the promised analysis of the hack - it continues to be the biggest exchange by
volume. The owners have a history of fraudulent behavior and are also behind Tether. Active margin funding
continues to hit unprecedented levels after every Tether issuance.

The other one is giving out / allowing people to buy zero-fee vouchers, which enables rampant wash trading.
This is not only used for BTC, but also allows them to easily create pumps for BCH or even shitcoins like XRP.

Bitfinex and Bithumb would be nowhere near the top of the trading volume rankings if they wouldn´t engage in
this kind of behavior.

Don´t you think it is odd that the CBOE future as well as the CME future are based on exchanges like Gemini, Bitstamp
or Itbit? This is really odd and I have no idea why they don´t use Bitfinex and Bithumb, because these are the two
top exchanges by volume. Oh, wait, I have an idea...

We can continue this discussion in the other BFX-related threads instead of continuing to derail nrd525´s Market Tracker.

I think Bitfinex are themselves the entity responsible for the wash trading alongside with people affiliated with the management.
Therefore I don´t think they pay any fees at all and can wash trade with impunity.
Otherwise you would obviously be right that trading fees discourage wash trading.

The owners have a huge incentive to boost trading volume artificially, not only due to the fact that
wash trading can be used to manipulate the price of any cryptocurrency, but also because it increases
the attractivity of the exchange for genuine outside investors.
Many people, who are looking for an exchange to trade are obviously going with the exchange with the
biggest liquidity and the biggest trading volume.

1. Artificially increase trading volume
2. Genuine money flows into your exchange, because your exchange is the leading Bitcoin exchange by volume
3. Profit
4. Use wash trading strategically to manipulate cryptocurrencies in your favor to increase profits even further
...

I was also thinking about opening a Mistertango account. However the 200 € withdrawal limit per month for the card seems rather low.
Is there a way to raise this limit (e.g. by providing additional documents) ?

I´m not so sure about the verisimilitude of this statement.

You have to realize that during the current 2017 BTC bull run (or rather a cryptocurrency bull run in general)
many new investors entered the market, who are not as tech-savvy and experienced as the early adopters. They haven´t experienced
a single bear market yet and will easily panic when such a market will occur. The people, who hold through 2014-2015
have strong hands and will likely hold even through another prolonged period of a declining BTC price. But the newbies,
who bought in this year will easily sell when they realize that Bitcoin is not only going to go up indefinitely. Especially the guys, who got into
(credit card) debt in order to accumulate Bitcoin. These "weak hands" can easily cause an unprecedented price decline
when they start to panic sell.

I don´t think the improved trading engine is live yet. I think it will be launched in the next few days and
I´m hopeful that it will improve the trading experience.

However, I really hope that they started the development of the new trading engine from scratch.
If they only made a few bugfixes and otherwise maintained the current codebase I´m extremely pessimistic
about the success of the new trading platform. The old one was simply too unusable in periods of higher
volatility (all exchanges have that problem to some degree, but Kraken was even more unusable than
the rest of them during these periods).

What if I told you that it was a store of value all the time? Bitcoin is not superior to credit cards or Paypal
as a payment system, but it is superior to fiat currencies due to its unique monetary policy and censorship resistance.

The talk of "micropayments for the 3rd world" and "easy online payments" was just marketing or people, who misunderstood
the core purpose of Bitcoin. The world needs sound money more than yet another payment solution.

Usually, you only get a fraction of the owed $ amount back in the case of a bankruptcy.

Mtgox is a really interesting case. I think it is unprecedented in the history of bankruptcy law that an insolvent
company owned assets that have appreciated in value as much as the BTC stash of Mtgox did.
Therefore I´m highly curious how this will play out.

I would be extremely surprised if we would see 100x volume at the Bitcoin futures of the CME.
Unfortunately, I think it will be another disappointment and it will not live up to the huge
expectations.

So far every launch of Bitcoin derivatives has seen rather low volumes (LedgerX, CBOE) and I expect this one
to not be different. Besides, I think the comparisons to the volume of the Bitcoin exchanges are flawed as
the Bitcoin exchanges with the biggest trading volume are known to allow/be involved in wash trading
(Bitfinex, Bithumb). Therefore I would be cautious with drawing comparisons between trading volume
of regulated Bitcoin futures and unregulated exchanges.

Has anyone already tested the cryptocurrency features of Revolut?

This could either be a great way to easily buy cryptocurrencies or an expensive way to buy
cryptocurrencies compared to conventional exchanges. Nonetheless, this shows the increasing
acceptance of Bitcoin among these new fintech startups.

I´m wondering why the official website of the CBOE was impacted by the big demand.

Originally, I was under the impression that the CBOE was basically providing only the back-end for the Bitcoin futures, while the investors
and retail clients had to use a broker to actually trade the futures. E.g. Schwab or TD Ameritrade in the US or Interactive Brokers
for traders that reside in Europe. Therefore the trading engines of the brokers would have to be impacted by the big demand
if the slower performance was actually caused by the mentioned reason.

Consequently, I think the CBOE website was subject to a DDoS attack by some entity, which has an interest to harm
the launch of the Bitcoin futures (e.g. someone with a big BTC short position).

I think the problem is only temporary. Right now small transcations are priced out of the mainlayer and small
outputs aren´t even spendable at all, because a transaction that consists of them would never confirm unless
you pay a fee that exceeds the value of the outputs.

However, in the future the Lightning network and other 2nd layer solutions will once again make it feasible to use
Bitcoin in 3rd world countries or as a small Bitcoin holder. I regard the current development as a kind of "growing pains",
which will be forgotten in a few years when everyone uses the Lightning network and the main blockchain
is mainly used for high-value settlements.

Since the first Bitcoin futures news I was wondering about this decision by the CBOE. I think Gemini is one of the most legit
exchanges around, but using a single exchange as a price reference could potentially be problematic.

Especially, because Gemini isn´t available worldwide and therefore may be heavily influenced by Bitcoin-related
development in its US markets. Besides, Gemini is not exactly at the forefront of BTC/USD trading volume.
According to Coinmarketcap they only had 1.02%   of total Bitcoin trading volume in the last 24 hours.

Therefore I´m highly sceptical whether it is a good idea to base their Bitcoin futures on an exchange that does
only represent a fraction of the BTC economy and is basically only available in the US and 3-4 other countries.

Where did you read that the criminal operation kept all BTC in one wallet?
They probably seized several wallets and the amount mentioned in the Zerohedge
article is the total confiscated amount.

However, it is probably going to be difficult to liquidate a big position like this
at these price levels. Back in the day when the US ran the auction for the Silk Road
coins, BTC price was a lot lower.

Let´s hope they put the money raised by selling the BTC to some good use and the money
doesn´t trickle away in the bureaucracy of the Bulgarian government.

Bulgaria’s GDP is about $52.4 billion (2016), so it is quite a shock that the Bulgarian Government is sitting on
an approximate $3 billion worth of Bitcoins seized in an anti-corruption operation back in May.

Putting this into a little more glaring context, Bulgaria is holding 18% of the national debt in bitcoins.

Bulgarian law enforcement jointly worked with the Southeast European Law Enforcement Center (SELC), a regional organization comprised of 12 member states,
to bust a sophisticated organized-crime network, arresting twenty-three Bulgarian nationals and seizing a total of 213,519 bitcoins.

...

Full article at Zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-08/bulgaria-government-shocked-discover-it-owns-3-billion-bitcoin


Fascinating read!

This is not a Bitfinex error, but rather a too restrictive Cloudflare setting.

I assume they had to accentuate their Cloudflare settings, because of the recent DDoS attacks on their website.

From their Twitter:


I would be more worried about them adding pretty sketchy altcoins in the last weeks. Altcoins like QASH or YOYO
should never be added on an exchange that wants to be taken seriously.

There is a reason why these coins are never added to Bitstamp, GDAX or Gemini.

From the Crypto-Games FAQ:

Basically you don´t have to worry about the divestment fee at all if you intend to invest for more than 3 weeks.
In general I think this system is absolutely fair and I actually prefer it to the "dilution fee" at competitor bustadice.

@Lutpin
Are there any plans to remove/add altcoins? Some of the currently used altcoins are barely seeing any betting activity.
Therefore it could potentially be in the interest of Crypto-Games to remove an unpopular altcoin in order to replace
it with a more popular one.

I´m not too sanguine about the timeline of the Lightning network. There were claims that
it was about to be publicly launched already in 2015. This was 2 years ago and they still
haven´t released it.

Sure, there have been a few successful tests and the clients look better these days, but I´m still
pessimistic about the timeline. It will eventually launch, but there is always the possibility of unexpected
issues and bugs. Given the fact that the developers are taking security very seriously it is unlikely
that we will see the launch of Lightning network in 2018.

Let´s hope that I´m wrong and everything works out faster than I expect.

I think the actual amount of Bitcoin on exchanges is lower than 1M BTC. The volume can also be explained by the fact
that the same BTC are traded multiple times.

Bitfinex is the biggest exchange by volume and they have roughly ~120k BTC in their cold wallet:
https://bitinfocharts.com/de/bitcoin/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r

You have to realize that a big part of exchange trading volume is not manual traders, but (arbitrage) bots.
They often do a ton of tiny trades and therefore create a lot of trading volume, while actually moving very
little BTC.

Besides, the reported trading volumes of many exchanges should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially
the Korean exchanges, which offer possibilities for zero fee trading, which artificially inflates trading volumes.