The idea is to sell you stuff. It makes money. For him. Off you.

Anything or anyone promising you GUARANTEED returns is a scam.

ahahahha 55 mil. First of all you have no idea how many they sold. And second of all they are not stupid. They will never sell something that will not make money. Are you that dense? Don't you realize that going for profits on the short term will handicap them in the future? These are products for a very very niche market. They have factored in the difficulty increase.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dash-difficulty.html#3m

Blockstream is cancer, that's not up for discussion. But why is Core so adamant about not increasing the size to 2? Just 2, the whole system is bottlenecked and they want to wait. This wait is hurting Bitcoin way more than a measly 2mb size. Personally, based on my own analysis, a 2mb cannot be bad. Going higher, probably. At least for now. I could see 4mb being ok for 2020+

BTG is truly a scammy shitcoin, but I don't think BCH is useless. I don't like that they opened the floodgates to this name-stealing shit, but it's a coin that has low fees and is fast. Bitcoin will lose and the whole ecosystem will lose if in 2018 in doesn't become more than a store-of-value asset. I feel another boost in adoption is around the corner and I don't want adoption to be hampered because people won't see it more than a payment system with irreversible transactions (normal people won't see this as a perk) that isn't either fast nor cheap. We need lightning network, and we need it yesterday. A block increase would be wonderful right about now. This is the way I see it from an economical point of view, maybe technically someone can prove me wrong.

Go on, I'm genuinely curious. Trap in what way? Laid by whom and what for?

First of all, btc finds itself in a deadlock, where it's no longer viable as a fast and cheap payment method, being painfully slow and expensive. And this is all Core's doing. Mind you, I am not an adept of Bitcoin Cash and I'm not here to champion BCH or their side. But doubling the blocksize to 2mb coupled with segwit would alleviate, at least for the moment, the strain on the network. I'm not arguing that increasing the size without reason would be a good thing, I can understand the sentiment that mr. Antonopoulos is trying to convey, that increasing the size endlessly would pose a serious threat to the network in the future and make it harder for individuals to provide nodes. But 2mb is not gonna make that happen.

BTC lost its dominance over the altcoins BECAUSE of core. Because of religious extremists like Luke Dash Jr that only see their views as being the right ones. Why was such a shady character (the man advocates for the DEATH of non-catholics and all other type of crazy stuff, if you didn't know: https://np.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/search?q=luke&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all). Why are these people put on a pedestal and trusted blindly? Like I said, I'm not here advocating Jihan and Ver's cause, but the Core team is dangerous.

Can someone change my view by pointing to the contrary? I think S2X would be a great improvement for the current problems of Bitcoin and it's something that they ALREADY agreed to.

Remove the hdd and plug it in a different computer. You could then use recuva to look for wallet.dat. But since this is such a large amount, I'd suggest taking it to a professional recovery service. They will ask for a decent amount of money, but there's a decent probability that you'll be able to recover the wallet. Good luck.

You'd think so but I disagree. Investing is much more about luck compared to mining. Mining, eventually will pay itself off (granted you know what you're doing), whereas investing can burn you big time. Especially day trading. I like mining to be honest. I don't like day trading and speculating. I'm on my way to building my own mining farm. Which I've very much looking forward to. I like checking the machines and troubleshooting'em. There's something very comforting even about the noise ahahah.

What I don't get is why aren't the admins trying to put a stop to account selling? Every day I see a bunch of people selling accounts, most of which are probably hacked.

I'd argue it's the other way around. Or rather, will be. Bitcoin has lost its hard supremacy over the alts a while back, when it lost 40% dominance over alts. We'll have to see growth rates for 2018 and an increase in scalability. I think lightning is long overdue, even at this point. If it does not rise up to demand, and another viable and more scalable payment method will be able to, I think it might. Be it ltc or dash or whatever. I think it's a real possibility, given the current state of affairs.

I will give everyone an addon cocktail to boost your security signficantly: uBlock origin, uMatrix, ghostery, tampermonkey for the anti-adblock, metamask and ether adress lookup. uMatrix will help keep you safe more than you could ever know.

I think you started this thread so you can so more posts to the count seeing as this is...well, let's not say a controversial opinion, but a rather poorly thought through one. Bitcoin can and absolutely will go over 7000. You think the biggest hurdles lie in-between 6 and 7k? That's absurd. The real hurdles are related to scalability and mass adoption. Not price. As of now many people are using btc as an investment. Most of us know (or better yet hope) that this little war between those vying for control of the network will end in compromise. S2X was a particularly decent compromise. Dunno why all the hatred from core against it. But I digress. I dunno where you came up with this 7k figure.

Seeing the meteoric rise it had this year and the number of people that joined the ecosystem, I'm seeing well over 25k by 2022. 25k would not surprise me by 2020. Granted that's on the off chance that the scalability debate will have been over by then, no more copies with huge marketcaps. Bitcoin has to become trustworthy to reach 1 trillion. For me trustworthiness has been on a downslide for some time now.

I really like Bittrex. For their size, they have decent support and a variety of coins. Saw some stuff about people having their accounts disabled and stuff, but I guess they must've had their reasons. However, lately I've been really getting into binance. Awesome support (from what I've seen) and no shady shit. At least so far. Plus the interface is far better than trex'.

What the hell is a pajeet? Is it a derogatory term for indians or something?

I don't think we're nearing a bubble, unless in 2018 there will be no project that goes truly mainstream. Something that brings crypto into the spotlight unlike the backstages we've been on until now. If we don't get something that the average Joe can truly understand is revolutionary and easy to use, I could entertain the possibility that there might be a bubble about to pop. But I have high hopes for 2018

Everything will balance out over time. You'll make a decent amount even 8 months a year from now.

The crypto space is all about freedom, but guys...I mean, you gotta realize at some point that you're hurting the credibility of bitcoin and inherently the whole ecosystem by supporting forks that have bitcoin in their name. I guess my rant isn't really directed towards op and his uranium bitcoin, because it's not really likely that it will take off. But bitcoin gold and the likes are truly hurting everyone involved in crypto. They are taking advantage of this freedom and have no basic decency or morals. Discrediting every solid project out there, not just bitcoin. I guess my point is...please, for the love of satoshi, stop creating forks and adding bitcoin to their name.

You probably forgot about S2X. It's probably one of the reasons the whole market is bearish right now, without any apparent reason. S2X is probably the most dangerous on bitcoin so far. It could definitely cause a crash. Can't away from egos and politics even in crypto.