While I have no doubt that entities everywhere are, at the very least, trying to manipulate the market, I think this is just how the world works now. Everything is sensationalized. You may think it's just the bad news, but the good news are, too. A perfect example is how Bitcoin was the media's investment darling early-December last year.

Nothing good is really happening to Bitcoin right now, so if there's only bad news to tell, then that's all people will talk about. It's best to just take in the facts and ignore all the noise.

Well that's interesting. I was wondering what the reason behind South Korea's urgency in crypto regulation was. They seemed to be in an awful hurry. If they're fielding high profile cases like this, then I guess it's a no brainer for them to fast track regulations, and even raid exchanges.

This was going to happen either way, though. All these incidents did was to make South Korea pull the trigger faster. Everyone knows crypto is exploitable, and that it's currently being exploited. I understand these crackdowns.

If everything is dropping, it's typically normal market movement. They tend to rebound in unison after a while, too. It looks like Bitcoin has hit a record low, but you honestly shouldn't worry about it. Things like this happen all the time. It may seem daunting if you're new to crypto, but at some point you'll just learn to dismiss it. The sooner you can do that, the better.

Meanwhile, here's an article that tries to explain why the market isn't doing too well right now:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apos-why-bitcoin-ethereum-ripple-202800064.html

Emphasis on tries, because no one really knows for sure why the market moves the way it does. If it truly is caused by the Bitfinex issue, then we may be stuck in a rut for a while. This whole issue about Tethers was just a disaster waiting to happen from the start.

Could you even call that bypassing? I mean, if the law says the bank cannot trade cryptocurrencies in Russia, then they're not barred by law from selling overseas. I'd have thought bypassing, in this sense, meant that they went through some legal loophole to sell in Russia. There's no bypassing that happened here, at least in my book.

I guess it is pretty hypocritical though. The bank is majority owned by the same state which ruled that they can't trade cryptocurrencies, which also determined that it would be in its best interests to engage in overseas cryptocurrency trading. I mean, what the hell is up with that? Lol.

The simplest way is to really make sure they don't have an endpoint to follow. These endpoints could be your exchange address (they can request your info from your exchange), or addresses you've used for your online personas (blockchain analytics services should be able to trace nearly everything from there, and the NSA could connect said online persona to you). If you can create an address that cannot be linked to your identity, then it doesn't matter that they can see all of your transactions. You're going to need a lot of throwaway accounts and addresses.

I've heard criminals trade their Bitcoins for Monero then back to Bitcoins to throw off the scent, so that's presumably a great way of preserving anonymity. There's also mixing services, though those tend to lose effectiveness the higher the value you're holding. If anonymity is such a concern, it might be best to just go all-in on fully anonymous cryptocurrencies.

What's there to be confused about? Their stance on Bitcoin is getting clearer and clearer the way I see it. They've already said that they don't plan on banning it, choosing to go the regulation route, and now they've ruled that it has value, and can therefore be confiscated.

Seems to me like they do accept its integration with society, for as long as it's not abused by shady individuals. South Korea is a major cryptocurrency market, and it's looking like it will continue to be. The crackdowns are just noise; most of these have already been done by countries like the US (regulation of exchanges, taxation, seizing Bitcoins, etc.).

Well the obvious answer would be that you would have less take-home profit, but are you asking whether that would impact incoming investments?

I honestly don't think it will stop people from investing. Taxes usually follow a bracketing system, so you only really pay a large percentage if you earned gargantuan amounts. For as long as governments don't craft a special "crypto tax" where you have to pay a higher amount than you normally would for crypto-related profits, most people should find taxation generally reasonable.

It kind of has the same logic as "why would I work a high paying job if I'm paying a massive amount in taxes? Might as well work a job with low pay."

While I agree that Bitcoin isn't overvalued, your reasoning doesn't make any sense. Bitcoin doesn't have anything to do with Twitter and Facebook. Sure, they were able to realize their potential, but that is yet to be seen with Bitcoin. If we were to go with your example, then the conclusion would be that it could still go either way.


So you're saying they are overvalued at the moment?

I am a big believer in Bitcoin, and could already be considered revolutionary because it spawned the rise of cryptocurrencies, but it can't be said that it has succeeded as a currency at least until it can scale. Let's see how the Lightning Network plays out when it hits the mainstream.

If the goal was to increase the level of the discussions, I feel like it's working well. I'm seeing a lot more well-thought out posts, and more people seem to be genuinely trying. It also penalizes account farming, because they will have to try to create quality posts for multiple accounts to rank up.

However, it also seems to have created a rank-up barrier for regular users, which I don't think was intended. Here's what theymos had to say about it on another thread:


I bolded a part for emphasis. The scenario he described clearly isn't happening at the moment, but let's just give it time. He's willing to make adjustments as well, so I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for newer users in the long run.

It's likely an oversight. I don't think the change has anything to do with Merit. Theymos downgraded the signature capabilities of Jr. Members, so that probably affected you somehow. Try moving this thread to Meta to get more attention.

I'm sure those are next. Facebook is currently under fire as its negative impacts to society comes to light, and they're trying to clean house. They also made changes to how ads are integrated in the news feed, in a way where they're not as visible, if I'm not mistaken.

HYIP and ponzis are harder to tackle because they don't fall under any "blanket industries" unlike the scammy ICO and crypto ads that seem to be all over. I don't necessarily agree with the blanket ban, but less scams seeing daylight is something I am completely in support of. Hopefully they'll take a healthy middle approach later on.

The problem is that most crypto-related businesses that advertise on Facebook are scammy. I've seen some of these ads before, and I believe it's a good move to remove them altogether. More people getting scammed by crypto businesses means less open-minded people in the future. They do increase awareness somewhat, but they also ruin crypto's reputation by scamming the not-so-knowledgeable.

I don't think it has anything to do with Mark Zuckerberg's stance on blockchain technology either. Cryptocurrencies are just one out of its countless possible applications, and a person could both be against cryptocurrency and an advocate of blockchain technology at the same time -- just look at banks.

...and you're better off staying away from them. I can assure you they're most likely duds. You also risk getting spyware on your device, which is especially disastrous if you're involved in crypto. Even powerful gaming PCs are barely powerful enough for mining, so there's no way you can mine with a mobile device.

You could do something like this though lol:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kvdv9/samsung-upcycling-galaxy-s5-bitcoin-mining-rig

You could have the power efficiency of five whole PCs!!! /s

Edit: thanks for the info mocacinno!

Well it's working at the moment. Fiat is inflationary by design precisely to discourage hoarding money and to spur spending, which apparently promotes economic growth. The system is built around it after all. How long it will continue to work is anyone's guess though.

It's hard to imagine how a deflationary currency will work because it goes against the principle of world economy at the moment. There could be a "rich effect" though, where peoples' wealth start growing, and they, in turn, start spending more and more. This phenomenon was observed in Japan recently. Either way, deflation is the least of Bitcoin's worries right now.

That would be because majority of them are scams. Also, South Korea's ICO ban is different from China. China banned it outright, while South Korea's ban only prevents local firms from promoting or participating in ICOs. The regular crypto user should be able to participate in foreign ICOs, unless they changed the scope of their ban.

It's also worth noting that neither ban is permanent, and will likely be lifted once proper regulations have been made for them.

Regulations typically don't affect prices drastically, unless they're just outright bad. There hasn't been any major movements when the IRS cracked down on Coinbase either.

Facebook's decision is an internal cleansing that is meant to ban “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” If you've seen crypto ads at all on Facebook, you'll see they largely fall under this umbrella. Facebook has recognized its impact in the world, and it hasn't been pretty. If this works, you'll see less ICO scams around.

The market-wide drop could be attributed to this:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apos-why-bitcoin-ethereum-ripple-202800064.html

So yeah...it's just another day in crypto. I wouldn't declare it dead just yet.

Blockchain technology is P2P while P2P technology doesn't necessarily have to be blockchain-based. P2P stands for Peer-to-peer, which is really just a fancy way of saying that two users can interact with each other without having to rely on a third-party server; everyone in a peer-to-peer network acts as both a client and a server. It cannot verify data by itself because it's really just a network configuration, while the Blockchain is a technological application that follows the P2P model.

Torrents are another application of the P2P model, so if you're more familiar with that, its relationship with P2P is exactly like the blockchain's relationship with P2P.

It could be very dangerous to assume that out-of-the-box pre-built computers are completely safe. These often come with third-party applications installed, and unless you can clean them out thoroughly, it could be a disaster waiting to happen. I would advise you to avoid HP and Lenovo because of the following instances of pre-installed spyware:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/28/hp-quietly-installs-system-slowing-spyware-on-its-pcs/

https://www.inverse.com/article/36136-lenovo-settles-spyware-laptop-case-ftc-32-states

A clean OS install should solve these problems specifically. One more thing to consider is that they say Windows 10 spies on everything you do, so as another user has said, Linux is the best way to go.

If you want another safe way to generate a paper wallet without tinkering with your existing OS, you could try something like Tails, but that could be a little too complicated for the regular user. An Ubuntu LiveCD or something similar could also work in theory, but I've never tried it myself.

I'd say it's really good in theory. Regular people usually don't know the first thing about mining, and having a reputable company like Samsung supply to companies that sell optimized pre-built miners puts mining within the reach of the mainstream. Interest in mining equipment seems to be heating up, so this is a good business move by Samsung. I hope it sparks interest in Bitcoin again, at least.


It has nothing to do with smartphones. They're selling chips to mining equipment providers.

People sell for varying reasons. It would be unrealistic to expect everyone to not touch their coins and simply HODL. Traders could be dumping their Bitcoins for surging alts for a quick profit, for example. I'm sure panic selling of weak hands is kind of a factor, but it's just as likely that not many people are interested in buying Bitcoin at the moment, considering that its growth has stalled.

Really though, a drop like this could be chalked up to normal market movement. No one can really tell, but I'd hazard a guess that it'll bounce back sooner rather than later.