The rise of digital fiat has nothing to do with crypto though. They share the same medium is all.

I would argue that this movement is even detrimental to crypto adoption because crypto's biggest selling point to the masses is that it's digital, and most of them couldn't care less about what goes on behind the scenes. They'll be able to send money to friends, family, merchants (which is all most people really care about) just as easily as they can with crypto. It's going to be harder to stand out.

Nothing. The person who registered it first has "rights" over it. Just because you disagree with their opinions doesn't mean that you should silence them by taking over their handle. There's no room for censorship within the crypto community.

It seems like most of the lobbyists to suspend/delete it believe it's committing fraud, but I personally don't think that's the case. It certainly could be construed that way, but just like with Bitcoin.com, it's probably a reach.

The thing is though, you probably won't get attacked physically if robbers don't know you have any crypto in the first place. Maybe you start with making sure you preserve your anonymity? I mean, I personally wouldn't suggest fighting back against armed attackers, especially because they typically try to outnumber you.

Theymos already locked that account. Even if he hasn't, it shouldn't be completely impossible to break into. If that account suddenly posted "I am Craig Wright", I'm sure people would be screaming "HACKED!", as it's a far more plausible explanation for it.

A better way to be to sign messages from (a lot of) the earliest blocks and maybe consolidate the speculated 1 million or so untouched coins reportedly belonging to Satoshi from Bitcoin's early days. Ultimately, even if the real Satoshi did resurface, people will never stop finding ways to be skeptical.

Interesting take. So basically, the trading volume is "pegged" to a fiat value rather than Bitcoin value. People spend the same amount of money for trading, it's just that Bitcoin became more expensive.

I'm not sure about their conclusion that trades from Localbitcoins are mostly used for practical purposes though. I find it more likely that their trading volume is less affected by price fluctuations because of the lack of options to trade BTC for alts. Basically, if you want to trade to make money, you use full-feature exchanges. If you just want to HODL and hoard quietly (which is still speculation), you can use Localbitcoins.

Where did he get these figures, I wonder?

You could read his blog post here:

https://www.kanaandkatana.com/valuation-depot-contents/2019/4/11/the-case-for-a-small-allocation-to-bitcoin

He also makes some very interesting points as to where Bitcoin's end game as a currency might be. His prediction is definitely much more than just throwing out an arbitrary number just because.

Analytics may show that you used a mixer, but that should be effective enough if you simply want to disassociate the coins with your identity. There are probably some ways to undo this, but you have to be specifically targeted and it's going to cost a lot of resources. If you don't think the FBI or some other entity is going to knock on your door anytime soon, this should be a safe enough option.

Otherwise, the most anonymous way would probably be to cash out Bitcoin, and somehow purchase Monero directly with fiat.

I could be wrong, but I don't think your DNS actually matters if you're using a VPN service with built-in DNS leak protection, since you'll always be using the VPN-provided DNS.

I'm still very iffy about suggesting Kaspersky (or any other third party antivirus for that matter) because common sense + Windows Defender should be enough to protect you in normal day-to-day activities. To each his own though.

I'm not necessarily against this, but mindsets like this is what makes others think Bitcoin is a gigantic ponzi. It just comes off as pushy and obsessive; the way you say it even makes it feel like a religion.

Either way, Bitcoin is money, and the best thing you can do for it is use it as such. Ask your favorite stores if they accept it so they know there's interest, support businesses that do accept it, offer to pay your friends with it, don't talk about it as a way to earn, etc. It doesn't have to be anything flashy. What's important is that people know that it exists and that it has real world uses.

Yes. This effectively erases your coins' history, as when they come out, people won't know exactly where they came from, if they're associated with so and so addresses, or who even owns them.

I completely agree with your points, but I would like to note that not all of them make you install software. CoinTracking, for one, is a web app, and it doesn't ask for your identity. It should be fairly easy to preserve anonymity if that's an issue, and you don't necessarily need to use it on the same computer you access crypto on. This isn't to say that using web-based trackers are without risks of course, but there are several ways to mitigate them.

It would still be best to avoid using a third party service for something you can do on your own, but when it comes to issues that could very easily get complicated (e.g. taxation), I could see the need for solutions like these.

Bolded part is only true if it has been established that ETFs are good for the crypto community as a whole. The community is still split on this.

But yeah, that's their end game. They've been trying to push an ETF for a while now, and more regulations would increase their chances. They could truly believe that ETFs are good for Bitcoin, but anyone supporting them should keep in mind that they're going to benefit directly.

I'm not so sure about this. Things are certainly better scaling-wise, but Segwit only really helps on legitimate traffic (and not all of these are Segwit transactions). Bad actors don't need to use it, so they can fill up blocks with regular transactions nearly as easily as they did in the past. Additionally, hostile miners could choose not to mine Segwit transactions to compound the issue.

IMO the exciting part is that it's targeted directly to the mainstream. UX has always been lacking on Bitcoin's part because people would rather not bother learning new methods to pay. If there's a service that can handle all of that behind the scenes, and it's integrated into an app that ~1 billion people already use, it could mean a lot for adoption. Lightning could be in the pipeline too, from what I've seen.

But yeah, execution is key in the end. We'll see how they handle it.

They didn't really provide fake data, only relayed it. Some exchanges were gaming their volume, and Coinmarketcap didn't up their game to filter those out. They're going to address it in the future, apparently:


So fake volume would still be reflected in the site, and it will be up to the user to judge their authenticity. This is better than arbitrary whitelists/blacklists in my opinion.

I don't know how Coinmarketcap works, but if all the listings and numbers are gathered automatically through the exchanges' APIs, then I wouldn't blame them. Otherwise, well, they're paid shills who shouldn't be trusted.

Lol what? I'm fairly sure that's not as simple as it sounds. There's nothing in the interview that says this too, so could this be an error in translation or something?

Either way, I doubt any country would want Bitcoin to be their national currency as this would mean they wouldn't be able to control their economy. The end game as far as the global stage is concerned, IMO, is for Bitcoin to be recognized as a legitimate reserve currency.

Wait what? If people are selling it for Bitcoin, wouldn't the price dynamics move in the opposite direction? The coin they're selling would slide while Bitcoin would surge?

Either way, if Litecoin's halving is indeed the catalyst for this pump (I feel that this is temporary), Bitcoin's won't be coming until early next year, with the halving estimated to happen around May 2020. I don't buy the Litecoin is shepherd and Bitcoin is sheep comparison mentioned in the article; if nothing else, it's the other way around. People are just trying too hard to look for signs of the end of the bear market.

To people saying Facebook is entering crypto just because of this news, you need to slow down. Wuabit is a chat bot that works (or would work in the future) on multiple IM apps, and it's not owned by Facebook.

Sure there are privacy concerns, and maybe some technical kinks here and there, but I think this is a pretty cool concept. You're only supposed to use these for small transactions anyway. It might also turn out to be a new and effective way for merchants to accept Bitcoin payments.

3. Investors escape stock market and flock into more established safe havens like gold.

Crypto will probably see some growth, but I doubt many people would be feeling particularly adventurous in the event of a full blown crisis.

You probably mean every crypto holder who wants to make money with their holdings. I mean, I'm not entirely opposed to regulations and I don't particularly care whether or not people are only using crypto to earn, but let's call a spade a spade. The Winklevoss twins are pushing this to make more money.

Everyone wants the market go get better, but not everyone believes that regulation is the way to go about it.