The Takeaway

Using bitcoin for international payments potentially increases payment speed and security, reduces costs, and helps to protect businesses from currency volatility in some countries. However, limited international acceptance of bitcoin currently makes it difficult for companies to work entirely in bitcoin. Using bitcoin thus exposes companies to FX risk, which can be significant because of bitcoin’s exchange rate volatility, and for which at present there are few hedging tools. However, as cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based payment systems are more widely adopted, bitcoin seems likely to become an important part of an ever-changing global payments landscape.

It would depend on the country itself, of course, as they deal with the issue differently, but in general:

a) Security movement is tightly regulated, so even peer-to-peer trading may be scrutinized
b) Miners may be considered as a "security issuer", so they will need to register themselves, and their sales would have to be tightly regulated
c) Selling Bitcoins may require even individuals with small amounts to have permits

Still, I imagine each case will have to be looked at individually, so the smaller players may not be affected at all, not to mention that it's likely impossible to track every single transaction. We'll see, I guess.

The cryptojacking attack appears to have persisted for weeks before being addressed, as it was configured to not max out CPU usage. Hackers injected it through an unsecured AWS S3 bucket.

BTC resistance level is at 9.5k . Bulls have to fights with bears to hold resistance level.

if bull wins , we can expect to see 15k level soon , probably in March  else Btc again can see 7-8k level.

Good to see more state giving crytocurrencies consideration, but what I don't understand is what some people are saying. Cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin is recognized by Government even US government some months ago there were auctions of Bitcoin in Australia and US, so if not recognized then who are they selling it to

Just crossed my mind today. Will it make sense if someone will create a paper money equivalent of bitcoin? And the coins will be the smallest unit of bitcoin, Satoshi? Like the currency today?  I think it is okay if it became a globally accepted currency. And it will serve as a payment for everyday goods. What do you think?

As far as I can observe being a teacher, I am definitely happy that my students are involve in cryptocurrencies and they earn for themselves and help their families. But, their school perfomance is getting worse. Please give your thoughts how will you help students to earn and at the same time it won't affect their school works?

That's my rough break down of those coins, some could go the other way, some could do better.
If I'm right all up that's $24,600 and a lot will come down to BTC price, I can't see ETH and LTC doing 4x sat value this year.

$50,000 is possible but will require a very good year, you've got quite a few high cap coins which have recently been pumped.

I would love to say we will do as good as 2017, but as of right now I don't think we will.

I'm curious how many people from the whole Georgia own at least small amount of cryptos. The annual volume  probably will be about some thousands USD (ofc unless any crypto related business is located there).

Given enough time, everything withers and dies, from the most robust institutions to the most popular crowdsales. No one expected all of 2017’s ICOs to last the course. The pace at which they’ve withered and died may come as a surprise though. Tokendata, one of the more comprehensive ICO trackers, lists 902 crowdsales which took place last year. Of these, 142 failed at the funding stage and a further 276 have since failed, either due to taking the money and running, or slowly fading into obscurity. This means that 46% of last year’s ICOs have already failed.

The number of ICOs that are still a going concern is actually even lower. An additional 113 ICOs can be classified as “semi-failed”, either because their team has stopped communicating on social media, or because their community is so small as to mean the project has no chance of success. This means that 59% of last year’s crowdsales are either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.

Trawling through 900 ICOs in one sitting is a deeply depressing experience, news.Bitcoin.com can report. Abandoned Twitter accounts, empty Telegram groups, websites no longer hosted, and communities no longer tended are par for the course. A digital graveyard, complete with metaphorical tumbleweed, characterizes the crop of 2017 that decided to take the money and run. Many raised zero; some raised a couple of thousand dollars; and a handful raised over $10 million. In each case, the end result was the same though: no MVP, no alpha release, and no contribution to the decentralized web for the betterment of humanity.

Many of the dead ICOs were doomed from the start. It will come as no surprise to learn that projects such as Clitcoin, Neverdie, and Zero Traffic didn’t make it. (Update: Neverdie has since been in touch to claim that reports of its demise are premature.) Some, which fell flat at the fundraising stage, are doing it all over again this year and hoping that 2017’s failure can be written off as a trial run. Freight trucking platform Doft is one such example. Looking at the countries of origin for failed ICOs shows that developing nations – and an entire continent in the case of Africa – are over-represented. Nevertheless, every major country and continent features in the list of shame.

Actually it's putting all your eggs into one basket is the one way that you can actually reach your goals in investing. Imagine investing in a winning coin/token but since you've diversified, you've only reached a fraction of supposed earnings.

Diversifiying is for people with low-medium risk appetite, if you've got the guts and knows your decisions well, you might as well risk it all.

According to Virginia senator Mark Warner crypto market could hit  20 Trillion in 2020. He spoke at the US Senate and added  "if we had the same rate of increase the next two years that we've had the last couple of years,we're talking now a couple hundred billion,we'd be at North of 20 Trillion dollars caught up in this area by 2020." I can't even imagine if it happens. So let's take ours positions

So when in the world will we break out of this bear cycle? When do you think it will end?

According to reports, the National Police Agency in Japan suspects 669 cases of cryptocurrency-utilized money laundering between the months of April and December.

The reports come directly from the cryptocurrency exchange operators themselves, which are obligated under Japanese regulatory measures to report suspicious transactions which may signal money laundering. The measure has been established to prevent criminal transactions — one of the biggest fears associated with digital currencies.

It is important to note, however, that the overall number of suspected money-laundering cases in Japan in 2017 currently stands at 400,043 — which means cryptocurrency cases reported during those 9 months only accounts for less than 0.17 percent of all suspected money-laundering cases.

The incredibly small percentage of crypto-utilized money-laundering cases seems to undermine the argument that digital currencies are tools for criminals looking to wash their money, though it could admittedly suggest many criminal cryptocurrency transactions go unnoticed.

What triggers a report from Japanese exchange operators is not currently known, though — according to Reuters — “questionable transactions repeated frequently in a short span of time” are likely what raises red flags.

The issue is that although the mempool has now cleared, and transactions with fees as low as 5 sats/byte are clearing in a few minutes, nothing has fundamentally changed yet. The mempool could get clogged back up tomorrow, and we could again see fees of over 500 sats/byte still waiting 24+ hours to clear.

Until this fundamental problem is addressed, and we can say that mempool will always be clear, and fees will always be low, bitcoin will never replace the dollar.