Well yeah, I mean, it's basically like wild price swings. If Bitcoin can go from $6,000 to $20,000 to a few weeks, it could go from $20,000 to $6,000 in a few weeks. Similarly, public opinion can go from "it's dead" to "omg it's the future" at a moment's notice. Bitcoin price is volatile, so it's just natural that public perception towards its future is also volatile.


I have zero doubts that this is happening, but I'm pretty sure a good chunk is also genuine fear for losing their investments and/or excitement over doubling their money. I'd say it's very effective, because it gets weak hands to buy in and then dump in a hurry. The people who get swayed are always the losers.

Well sites earn money from clicks, and saying someone loaded up on $400m worth of Bitcoins is much more attractive than saying some exchange is gathering coins to an address lol.

But yeah, someone buying that much would certainly have caused a sudden spike, and I haven't noticed any the past few days, so I thought something was wrong. This was either a bad journalist who doesn't do much research, or a good one who can mislead readers for their own agenda.


The address loaded up on Bitcoins between Feb. 9-12 though, and you posted your observations on Feb. 1,  so maybe you saw a different case? Can't really rule out any market manipulation whenever Tether is involved at this point lol.

You make great points, and I completely agree, but the true problem lies within the general public who will consume the news piece -- they're not going to care.

This is yet another issue that could be sensationalized, and those aren't good for Bitcoin as a whole. Green groups are going to fixate on the cons, and with enough traction, could cause government regulators to step in. It's not a problem now, but it could be in the future.

Does Coinbase itself care? All I know is that they're required to flag and report transactions of certain amounts, and then it'll be the feds' job to determine the origin.

Then again, Coinbase probably wouldn't want to buy tainted coins. Can they refuse sell orders if they somehow determine that the source is unclean?

How is it a subjective term? You were able to define it clearly and concisely. The origins of the money in question may be legal for all governments care, but money laundering itself is illegal, so there are no gray areas nor subjectivity there. Engage in it, no matter what your reasons behind it may be, and you will be considered a criminal.


I will say it again: I completely agree. Data has a premium nowadays, and it's indeed risky to divulge information to third parties. It's the same problem with other KYC services, who can get hacked and have their customers' info publicized. My point is simply that governments will not care enough to make this one-sided KYC thing happen; it probably should happen, but it won't.

This. If you're going to spend that much time and effort to earn $25 in crypto anyway, why not just spend that time to earn $25 in cash directly? With the same amount of time invested, I'd bet you'd earn much more doing your job than what you would have earned hunting airdrops and bounties. Go work overtime or something. You're exchanging your time for money either way, so you might as well make the most out of it.


If anonymity is the only reason you don't want to buy, you could create a throwaway account and trade with a random user. You won't need an account in an exchange, and you won't need to reveal your identity. I mean, if you want to trade the crypto you earn in the future anyway (according to your topic title), this shouldn't be too big of an issue.

That's pretty much how merits already work for merit sources. Merits are already used as "Likes" by most users anyway, and having two systems in place to reward good posts just seems awfully redundant. It also seems like a way to circumvent the finite limitations of the merit system, which was put in place to prevent abuse.

I do see where you're coming from though. Merit rewards are spotty and could be a detriment to spammers (in which case it works) and regular users (collateral damage IMO) alike in ranking up. Theymos has expressed willingness in tweaking the system, however, so it would probably be better to simply be patient and give it a chance to work.

I fully believe that Tether is a scam, but I don't think it's solely because of the increasing supply, and I don't feel that it's fair to correlate that with printed currencies.

The problem with Tether is the claim that every single one is backed by USD. Not crypto in USD terms, but USD in cold hard cash. If that were true, then Tether should have 2 billion USD in reserve, and therein lies the problem. Releasing more supply is fine for as long as they're backed properly according to their claims, a fact which people are now starting to doubt. Printed currencies are backed differently, and I'd rather not comment on its legitimacy.


We're getting a preview now. Most people would rather HODL than spend to increase its value. People might say that would stagnate the economy as spending is discouraged by deflation, but another case to look at is Japan and its new crypto rich -- they spent more because they had more and it had a positive effect on the economy. I'd say it wouldn't be too bad.

That means the market sets the rates, not the miners. It's basic business sense, too; why would you accept work that pays less when another available pays significantly more? If no one paid any transaction fees, they would confirm transactions for free. That tells us that they have very little say on the fees. That being said, miners could spam the network with transactions to drive the price up, but that also costs money, and is a different discussion entirely.

You only get worse service if you pay a substantially smaller fee than everyone else.

I'm pretty sure some of the tax money you pay go into printing of more cash. Banks are only free because they make money off you, and they do charge for certain transactions.

I don't have beef if you see miner fees as taxes, but unlike actual taxes, the miners don't set the fees; you can pay however much you want (granted, very low fees are going to get your transaction stuck in limbo). That's a very significant, fundamental difference.

The fees spiked around Christmas time because users started entering into bidding wars for transaction confirmations with each other, driving the fees up. It's more of the network's fault rather than the miners'. I'd also like to note that if you actually paid the increased fee, you'd get the usual service, so it technically didn't go down.

I can't answer that question, but this link has a pretty nifty estimate as to how many times Bitcoin has died lol:

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/

What people don't seem to get is that it's a speculative market, and that huge price swings can and do go both ways. Bitcoin has already proved itself to be resilient by showing that it's more than capable of surviving a couple of bear runs.

Market cap shouldn't even be used in these scenarios in my opinion. It's way too simplistic to accurately gauge the value of a complicated and volatile market. Selling and buying not only affects the circulating supply, it also affects unit prices and the net effect doesn't seem to be linear. That means the market cap value lost doesn't necessarily equal the value dumped.

I only really find it useful when comparing crypto values where you can't rely on solely the price per coin.

I completely agree, but this is unlikely to happen. If ICOs weren't required to abide by KYC provisions, it could potentially be a hotbed for money laundering, which is already one of governments' biggest concerns with crypto. I'd even go ahead and assume that governments doesn't care as much for their scam potential as their money laundering potential. China likely banned them to prevent capital outflows rather than to prevent scams, for example.

You mean curriculum. This is great. Knowledge has always been a significant barrier to crypto adoption, and this looks like it could address just that.


Well blockchain technology falls under, and is really just an application of computer science, so I'm sure any developer worth his salt could grasp the key concepts fairly easily. It shouldn't be too dissimilar from finding experts on new, emerging technologies.

Cyrptocurrency classes, specifically, seem trickier to me because I have no idea what could be taught under the subject. It would be interesting for a class to tackle the several different technological approaches they take, but investment related ones (except maybe their business application) shouldn't be taught at school in my opinion.

I'm going to go on a more philosophical route and say: ideals.

Most people who get into crypto these days want and expect to make money off them. I suppose there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but that's where all the speculation and emphasis on price comes from, which in turn give birth to the ponzi comparisons. It also attracts people which are the first to dump, first to lose money, and first to call out cryptos as scams whenever it slides.

I'm assuming crypto will be much better off once people stop looking at them as earning opportunities.

There is no way to prove or disprove this, so I'm letting you believe in what you believe. What I'm saying is that the the modern economy is built upon the assumption that fiat is inflationary, in part because of the shortcomings of the gold standard. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, you just have to pick a side.

Inflation is healthy in small doses. Fiat is designed for that, even. Too much, and you devalue everything, too little and the economy could stall. The modern economy revolves around fiat being inflationary. Replace fiat with Bitcoin, which is deflationary, in this model and it's going to collapse.

If Bitcoin replaces fiat, the economy will have to adjust around it, not the other way around. Bitcoin having fixed supply and being deflationary is a con until then, at least in that context.

It doesn't look like you've transacted with Bitcoin lately. I'd be surprised if you have to spend even 50 cents. Unless you're on an exchange of course, in which case it's hardly the network's fault.

Other than that, it's cool. We all have different reasons for believing, and if you feel Bitcoin is no longer that, then by all means make your exit. I still believe in Bitcoin as a currency. It's still in its infancy as far as the technology goes, and improvements like the Lightning Network are going to make it more and more viable.

It provides an additional layer of protection, so it's definitely beneficial, but I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary in most cases. If you're on a secure, trusted network, and you don't mind your ISP knowing what you're doing, then you could get away without using it. You're going to always want to be on one when using a public network though. It could also protect you if your device hasn't patched the fairly recent WPA2 vulnerability among others.

Another word of advice: try to stay away from free VPNs. They're free because they make money in other ways, which may include selling your data.

Another thing to add is that the internet also used additional layers to help with its scaling, so it provides a really nice parallel to Bitcoin. They're very different, but I do hope Bitcoin can replicate the internet's success.

By scammers I'm assuming you mean Bitcoin Cash shills? Lol. I have nothing against the project itself, but yeah, the way they promote it and their need to constantly disparage Bitcoin rubs me the wrong way.