First of all, I appreciate your skepticism. But I'm not sure whether or not "immigrating to a new country" is the right analogy to make.


The question probably boils down to, do the whales matter in terms of keeping bitcoin's network running? Is a leader required for the network to function? The answer to both these questions is a clear and decisive no.

Sure, traders with large positions are able to influence the markets in a drastic way; but in what open market is this statement not true? Virtually in every market, futures, stocks, commodities there are big players and small players, that's just the way it is.


You have to realize that wealth distribution isn't something that the currency itself can solve. Also, looking at the gini coefficient of BTC alone doesn't tell you the whole picture, since a lot of coins are centralized at certain exchanges that do not legally belong to these exchanges.

At least with bitcoin, you are sure that wealth distribution is transparent and immutable. Contrast that to fiat, and you'll see the obvious benefits.

My answer is no, despite the overwhelming amount of "yeses" within this thread.

However, the reason is not that there is a lack of demand for such a facility, or even that it's not technically feasible - these prerequisites can both be fulfilled. The problems arise from the regulator's side, where with the tightening regulations, being completely legally compliant comes at an extremely large cost, especially when you compound that with the already high establishment costs of a physical storefront.

Maybe if you shifted the criteria to "virtual & physical" instead of physical only, there would be a higher possibility. But for a physically operational bank to completely shift their loan and savings denominations to bitcoin, all the while complying with every clause of every regulation, is next to impossible at this stage.

This was why I never felt like Libra was the glorious thing people made it out to be.

And now, people are grouping Libra in the exact same category with Bitcoin, despite obvious differences in how the money supply of each is managed and how their values are derived from, if you know anything about economics.

It's almost like an excuse. It's like saying "we got this new Libra thing that is threatening our central banks, and we've also got btc which we don't like - we're just going to shoot both of these problems with regulation of Libra as a premise".

But honestly, what's surprising here? Nobody was expecting the president to be pro-bitcoin to begin with, and all the points he raised are obvious fallacies that have been debunked time and time again. And you can essentially see the same picture by looking at the BTC markets, which almost didn't move.

I don't agree with how this data seemed to be formulated, since it feels like it's been a completely arbitrary projection. But the general trajectory is certainly going to be that bitcoin's growth will outpace gold's growth in the long run.

Bitcoin is essentially the best digital substitute for gold as a store of value as we have right now. Even people at the Federal Reserve are admitting this (look at the news that just came out if you haven't already, regarding the Fed). It's also experiencing a whole ton more of adoption and thus, increase in demand than gold, not to mention the gradual paradigm shift of gold bugs to opening their minds to cryptocurrencies as a viable safe haven as well.

At the end of the day, as I said, I wouldn't put too much weight on the 25-30x figure he produced - since there is no clear evidence that he's used any legitimate analysis to reach that figure. But I certainly think that over the next few decades, despite gold's status of a global reserve currency will still be there, it will probably diminish somewhat.

1. I don't think that there is even an option for in person cash trades anymore on localbitcoins. If you click on "post a trade" you'll be greeted with 2 options only, none of which is cash-related:



2. You raise a very valid concern, but it's not within LBC's powers to make a change imo. They're likely only doing this because of regulatory pressures. They simply wouldn't do this if there was none of that - they know well enough that they'd be losing out on a lot of potential customers.

However, Tier 1 verification is still available for these people, and I'm fairly sure that you're still able to trade anonymously or with little legitimate verification for an amount up to $1k cumulative.

First of all, I'm not saying that this figure that they put out is an impossibility. It could well happen if there was to be hyperinflation; but the numbers that they've put out are completely arbitrary with no basis.


If you look at this statement, it's not entirely true.

They're completely ignoring any short term volatility. USD devaluing does not necessarily transfer dollar by dollar into gold. Otherwise, why has there been no apparent major movements in gold prices over the last few years, even a whole decade, despite CPI rising? Putting forth this oversimplified argument is definitely a trend in the majority of gold bugs, including the infamous Schiff. But it rarely pans out.

Also, they're not taking into account the demand for gold in the long run. Even if fiat does devalue by half, yet demand for gold decreases for whatever reason (which we are somewhat seeing since its store of value properties and status as a global reserve asset can now be substituted somewhat by cryptos), then the price will not trend exactly in the same way as inflation.

Predictions like these for gold I tend to ignore, despite there being merits for holding gold as a hedge still, because of how certain they make it seem. "Mathematical certainty", they say 

Especially when it comes to financial crises. Central banks seem to be extremely welcome of the idea of bailing out large institutions and offering as much credit and liquidity as they need - even though it comes at the expense of debasing the currency supply, essentially, and that you're making these institutions more complacent, despite the fact that it's as a result of their own mistakes.

In the short run, central banks' influence and discretion over the money supply, interest rates etc. may be counter-cyclical. But in the long run, I don't think that their effects will be any good at all.

Just look at the primary 'product' of all central banks, their fiat currencies. There has been none in history that has preserved its value past several decades. While I don't necessarily think that gold and silver will be the alternative people will flock to like gold bugs seem to suggest (due to the convenience and uprising of BTC, in particular, which serves the same purpose), blindly trusting in this centrally controlled fiat system as a long term store of value isn't any good either.

I completely echo your sentiments in regards to this Libra idea. Investors simply don't seem to realize that it is completely unrelated to the decentralized bitcoin, but it is understandable why they seem to fall into this fallacy since sensationalist mainstream media is hyping it up so much.

But I honestly don't think that this dump is something that is caused by Libra alone, even though this is most likely one of the contributing factors, rational or not. Panic dumping by weak hands, as well as the strong resistance at $13k, are both factors.


I'm not surprised at what the Fed said at all, though. I've long thought that Libra was a project that won't be welcomed by the decentralized end of the spectrum (i.e., bitcoin holders), nor the centralized end, i.e., central banks, due to the fact that even though it is still a centralized currency, it still takes away control in an explicit way from central banks.

The Fed's primary concern imo is that from the implementation of Libra, they wouldn't be able to implement and maintain monetary policy as effectively if it was adopted on a massive scale. From a regulator's perspective, it always raises concerns for them given the global nature of this thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the ECB or other central banks issue similar statements in the future, but I don't think this should affect BTC at all, if markets were perfectly rational.

I think that the risks of IEOs are still there, and they are severely understated (for obvious reasons) by the exchanges who offer them.

You've got the obvious risk that you have an added counterparty, i.e. the exchange itself, with whom you have to trust the funds with. While this is a lower risk in terms of them just exit scamming, it is still a risk, especially when you factor in concerns such as account suspensions and frozen balances.

I think that you gotta also consider the legitimacy of the project itself still. While the exchange probably does screen out certain obvious scams, there is no guarantee that projects on their platform are going to continue to be developed AFTER they raise their funds. IEOs only address the risk of the project itself taking the money and running away.

Lastly, you have to realize that by having an exchange platform like this offer floats, investor complacency will fuel more bubbles with the added liquidity. Is it reduced risk in aggregate? Potentially, but it's not perfect.

Are you sure of this, and you're not signed up to any other accounts with this email that is crypto related? I checked my email registered with Bitmain and haven't received anything.

The email itself is relatively benign since it is so obvious, and probably will get flagged as spam soon anyways. It should be the compromised database that should be a concern, since a lot of people who have an account with them also have accounts on other crypto-related sites with the same account that could be potentially affected.

I don't think that Bitmain has recently released any info regarding a leak of their database. They might need to be notified  

I think that the BIS's vision is entirely different from what this article is trying to suggest.

Their stance is probably still quite anti-decentralization, given their obvious affiliations with the world's central banks all over. Which means that what they are probably focusing on are blockchain projects (presumably, ones on a national scale) that utilize blockchain technology to facilitate faster international settlement, which is one of their primary functions.

I don't necessarily think that their stance has shifted significantly on currencies like bitcoin. While the article makes it seem like that they are eyeing BTC as potentially a reserve currency in the future, they are likely referring to some central bank issued digital currency. I.e., reserve accounts, except cryptographically secured.

This is quite an interesting scenario.

What these projects are doing is debatable, because it essentially shows that their operations are still somewhat centralized. Sure, they may be saving their projects in the short term from a dump, but in the long run it does no good for their project's image. I'm sure anyone with a vested stake at Cryptopia would hate to see this happen as well.

Also, even if there was to be a large scale dump by Cryptopia to recoup losses and reimburse people, how would they do so effectively when there is only extremely limited liquidity for these coins to begin with since their market caps are so damn low?  That's what I don't get.

I'd attribute this to basic human psychology.

You see this across all markets, whether stock markets, property markets, etc. where the price of the asset may go on a multi-year bullish run, only to be met with some form of flash crash at one point or another. It's not limited to just BTC.

Traders within the market are more prone to panic when they see a sudden trend reversal from bullish to bearish, than the other way around. Especially when you factor in the skepticism that people have at the start of a bull market. i.e., if you follow the bubble graph, it's not until euphoria kicks in when people's fomo and greed outweighs any common sense.

TLDR; Do you panic more when your investment is shrinking, or is your propensity of buying more coins greater when your investment is on the up? Probably the former.

I personally think that they should be considered to be scams, period. And they should be held to the same scrutiny as any other scam involving a blatant breach of contract.

Their interests are clearly in paying users as little funds as possible, as opposed to potentially upholding any sort of formal regulation that need to comply with. Otherwise, they'd be open to paying bounty participants in terms of BTC, or any fiat, since that would DEFINITELY not be a breach of any securities laws (from their perspective, they'd just be paying for a service with a currency).

But they're not open to that option, which also indirectly shows their own lack of trust within their own project.

I'm not sure why people don't demand funds to be escrowed in bounty campaigns the same way they demand sig campaign funds to be escrowed - even if the payment is in the token of the project.

Damn, those are strong words.

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I think that your argument makes really close to zero sense, though. While banning margin trading would potentially decrease instabilities within the market caused by people trading on leverage, it also causes a concern as to the lack of short positions that keeps the checks and balances within an overheated market (watch khanacademy if you don't understand this concept), as well as the fact that you're essentially restricting what people can do with their funds with decreased liquidity overall. Why do that, when it comes down ultimately to virtually no improvement in anything?

Whether or not an exchange decides to go with a dividend sharing model, or pay interest to deposits, is entirely up to them. At this stage though, there is simply not enough liquidity and way too much credit risk within the BTC denominated credit market for exchanges to comfortably offer a guaranteed interest rate like a bank.

China already has a ton of these. The earliest that I could recall seeing from that particular market would be Bixin, which as far as I know is still operational.

I personally think that the concept of social payments is extremely intriguing, especially when you consider what WeChat has done with their payment platform, essentially forming a duopoly with Alipay within the Chinese payment remittance market.

However, I'm still not entirely sold on this concept of messenger/social payments being used in BTC. It's a very niche market, and on top of that, as a user you'd always have to be concerned regarding the security of your funds; since using these services will always result in a lack of control over your own Privkeys.

My concern is that in your contract there were probably never any promises with the performance of his picks.

After all, the gambling industry is based on complete chance in some respects. And whilst tipsters try to swing these chances in their favor, they usually won't go out of their way to guarantee winnings which I assume is the case here.

So unless you have proof that within your agreement he had claimed something regarding the performance of his tips or something along the lines of that, all you can say at the moment is to warn people to stay away from him. Mods won't do anything about it, because that's not their job.

The hold isn't anything uncommon. They claim that it is a security feature, and has happened to many first time buyers (pretty sure there was a thread a while back regarding the same issue), but I feel like that they are really lacking in terms of communicating clearly with the user BEFORE they deposit any funds that there will be a security hold.

Otherwise, it's no different an exchange holding up your withdrawal, at the expense of the user. You don't know where your funds are being used, heck, it could be used to fill the liquidity gap in their operations for all you know.

I would strongly suggest you move away from using Coinbase, but not from trading bitcoin entirely. Don't let this one negative experience with a specific firm known for shitty customer service and constant holds/account suspensions drive you away from the wider market. Despite the worse rates, using P2P exchanges gives you a heck of a better experience overall, so you should consider that at well.


I second this for sure.

I remember Australia doing this several years back as well, alongside Japan. I believe that removal of these draconian tax standards is absolutely necessary if a country wants to move forward in terms of financial innovation.

Why do I call it draconian? Because essentially, a GST/VAT or whatever you call it is a double taxing. If you are treating BTC as a good, then shouldn't there be no capital gains tax charged? Yet, many countries used to and still have this double taxing standard, which essentially drives out legitimate individuals and businesses from participating in the regulated market.

Singapore's move is a good one. It's protecting the rights of the investors while boosting their status as a nation which welcomes FinTech, which can attract foreign bitcoin businesses to incorporate there to the benefit of themselves. This said though, this is not the only improvement that can be made on tax codes worldwide. Making clarity remains the most important aspect imo.

A 0.2% taker fee is still a fee, you simply can't discount that and say that there is only a flat fee due to the lack of a maker fee; which is quite common in derivatives trading platforms anyways due to their need for lots of liquidity.

What is your affiliation with the SwitchDex platform anyways? Are you part of their team?

Another thing that I noticed was the fact that the design of their site is eerily similar to ForkDelta's, despite some minor cosmetic changes. I'm yet to be convinced that this offers any significant advantage over counterparts like ForkDelta or idex, both of whom seem to have more liquidity. I think that in order to generate that initial liquidity needed within the exchange to kickstart it, they might need to even consider subsidising maker orders for a while.