Quoting from that IMF report:


I think that's a fair judgment on things right now. There has been plenty of people out there that have either claimed that bitcoin is not going to survive, or is a ponzi scheme/pyramid scheme, etc. You name it. These people I think simply don't understand what bitcoin brings to the table, and its decentralized nature.

However, even though the IMF article showed some pretty positive stuff about crypto, it's not going to be necessarily the case on a national level where legislation and regulation is actually made.

It's still up to the governments to decide whether they would like to ban crypto (even though that would be a completely stupid idea due to the impossible task of enforcing it) or not, and what regulations they want to put in. The IMF also has not made clear whether the "crypto assets" they support are decentralized, or issued by governments. That part of it is still vague and up to interpretation.

Warren Buffet has been historically very critical of bitcoin. There is absolutely nothing surprising here.

He claims that bitcoin is not an investment, and investments are only things that produce a dividend. Well, if the global accepted definition of an investment was indeed that then it would be true. But most people in my opinion do not have such rigid definitions of an investment.

He also goes onto talk about how bitcoin is not a currency because it is traded against the USD. That's just completely nonsensical to me. Bitcoin's traded against the USD and various other fiat currencies, and also other cryptos because that's what people demand and that's why there is volume in these markets. It has nothing to do with bitcoin being tied to dollars or whatnot, in fact, it is completely independent.

I don't think that he appreciates the advantages that bitcoin offers in terms of controlling supply, decentralization, etc. His statement about bitcoin not being around in 10-20 years just shows that he probably hasn't done as much research as he should have before commenting - even if adoption does not pick up like we expect it to as a form of currency, the blockchain of bitcoin will still be functional as long as someone uses it.

In my opinion, stable coins are one of the most dangerous and shady assets that you can put your wealth in.

Firstly, stable coins represent fiat currency which is in itself something that has been historically depreciative.

Secondly, stable coins are not even actual fiat currency. There is no way the majority of the time for the investor to be 100% sure that the company issuing stable coins have completely full reserve all the time. And even if they can, there is no way of guaranteeing that the company will be willing to redeem their stable coins for fiat on demand.

So you're absolutely right. In certain instances of fractional reserve being used in stable coin issuance, which I believe is extremely probable for the majority of centralized stable coins, it is essentially no different than printing money out of thin air. It's only because stable coins are perceived to be backed fully and redeemable at all times does it have any value. But in reality, it's probably nothing like that.

@OP, did they pay you out at the 3.1 odds or the lower odds? Could you check and let us know?

Even though cloudbet did solve the issue at the end, it was not until that OP had to post on scam accusations that they actually looked into it.  It also took 3 days for them to resolve an issue that was created by themselves.

And with the history that they have with all types of complaints from their customers ranging from withdrawals to seemingly random KYC requests as a bitcoin sportsbook, everyone should be extremely careful with dealing with them.

Furthermore, I'd like to ask Cloudbet what exactly can constitute a "palpable error"? Is there a predetermined threshold for the odds to be considered erroneous? Is it solely up to you to interpret that word and deduct winnings from gamblers?

I absolutely agree. With ETFs, it's not going to really benefit day to day bitcoin users at all. The thing is that these ETFs are attempting to target whale investors as well as institutions who want to invest in bitcoin, without having to hold bitcoin themselves.

The fact that someone who is investing in an ETF is not able to hold any bitcoins, or anything that is backed by bitcoin sounds like an extremely dangerous idea. It can obviously start manipulation of the market as well even though I do think that's less of a concern with bitcoin as you mentioned due to the more liquid nature of actual bitcoins, compared to chunky gold/silver pieces that needs to be melted into bars.

But all of this means that ETFs shouldn't be hyped up like it is being right now. It defeats the purpose of a decentralized crypto in the first place, as a store of value. With the wbtc created by Bitgo, it defeats the purpose of a decentralized exchange as the funds need to go through a centralized checkpoint before it can be converted from BTC to wBTC. Both of these instruments aren't something that I personally would appreciate or use at any stage, even if ETFs do get approved.

There was indeed some sideways movement over the past few months in the bitcoin market. However, there has also been no momentum upwards and the bearish cycle that we're in essentially means that we're going to see a few more months of dips and relative bearishness.

With the dip today, there are two possibilities. Either bitcoin prices rebound up above the $6k support level once more, or the prices go down further due to panic sellers or other factors.

We're yet to see what happens but as I said, I don't expect a trend reversal to come any time soon. Historically, bear markets have lasted longer than the amount of time this one has gone on for, which in my opinion is an indicator that a recovery is probably not coming this year or even in the near future despite some renewed bullish predictions. The 2020 halving however should stimulate the market a lot, though.

Great news for bitcoin holders in China.

This decision essentially means that the government is saying that holding bitcoin is legal, transacting with crypto is legal, but buying/selling and running crypto related businesses are still frowned upon in the country.

I think that most bitcoin users will be satisfied with this result, and means that buyers can still turn to overseas exchanges to acquire bitcoin if they would like to acquire bitcoin. However, this decision isn't a guarantee that bitcoin ownership would be outlawed in the future at some stage, because of the fact that this policy is able to be changed at any given time if China deems that they want to crack down on things. Still though, if they do go with that route, it'll be pretty much impossible to enforce which is why they're recognizing bitcoin as property right now in the first place.

The worries are obviously there with manipulation, as we see with silver and gold which also had ETFs and apparently started being manipulated after ETFs came out. Of course, this claim is not totally verified, as with all such claims.

But anything that is traded on a large scale that is not bitcoin itself in my opinion has the chance of being manipulated, because as far as I know, there are no requirements as to the issuer of the ETF having to hold actual bitcoins to back the value of the fund.

Anyhow, there is no way to stop it if it was to get approved by the SEC, but it's a slim chance to none looking at right now. All previous applications have been either rejected or pending review, and I don't think there's a big chance to change in the future for the VanEck ETF.

I guess it does indicate where a country is in terms of technological adoption, as credit cards being popular. With more cash dominated places, you generally tend to see adoption of new technologies to a lesser degree.

But the decision to go cashless isn't really on the consumer, and there are obviously countries where economic development isn't really that high, but they are still forced into using credit cards or other cashless payment methods due to their fiat currency being dysfunctional.

It is not reflective of your ability to pay. IMHO, it could be reflective of debt since credit card is essentially loans on demand. If you look at most western countries, you'll see that the levels of credit card debt is just crazy right now. Anyhow, credit cards are really not something that's new and I think if you want an indicator of a nation's economy economy, still look at all the traditional indicators like GDP etc. depending on your needs. If you want to look at how receptive they are to new Fintech, look at their policy with crypto.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions right now. They are still allowing users to withdraw their funds at this stage it seems, even though they are delisting coins.

However, I would personally never use them due to their proven incompetency in their customer support and processing withdrawals and deposits. I used them a year back or so where I encountered a problem with a withdrawal that was delayed for hours. Thankfully, that was solved. But others have experienced delays for weeks or even months and can't even reach support as it is completely unresponsive.

Their delisting of tokens is quite shady and I think the bottom line is that if you do have funds on liqui, no matter whether it is actually delisted or not, take it out. There are not a trustworthy exchange at this stage.

They can't just say that. They've been essentially advertising their investment to investors while leading them to falsely believe that this person was a part of their team - and only now they've been realizing this? It's still misleading advertising and extremely shady at best.

Also, it's been around 5 days now, and they still have not updated the pictures on their site, nor provided a valid reason why that photo was up. What is going on?

It seems like that they're just trying to get as much money as possible now before exit scamming, or at least that's how I see it. Cryptofintra seems like another obvious scam probably owned by the same people. Anywhere else that is even slightly legitimate won't list this scam coin on their site, let alone promote it on their home page.

Exactly.

And this is only one case. I personally would not be surprised if all big markets, whether forex, commodities, etc. are rigged one way or another by central actors or whales, regardless of the state of the market, whether it is regulated or not. In fact it is extremely probable.

This is just one case out of the many that is currently still going on in all regulated markets, except these don't get reported.

Yet, crypto gets so much backlash for being unregulated, being manipulated, etc. Well, it's just the nature of all markets. Besides, regulation or not, market manipulation to a certain degree is bound to happen, and crypto exchange is already heavily regulated in most countries. There's no point in criticizing the crypto/bitcoin market for this.

Several warning signs here.

Firstly, it's an investment bot on telegram. No legitimate investment company would ever pitch to you their investment packages on telegram, it's just not done that way. Professionals will at least use a website or have a physical location, and even then, it's not guaranteed to be legit. Secondly, you've got the absurdly high returns and even you know that's unsustainable. 1% per hour is ponzi like, even if they pay you out the first time, you will not ever be able to withdraw more in the future.

Lastly, asking for a deposit in order to withdraw your "free earnings" is like the oldest trick in the book for scammers. We've seen this countless times already. They will never deliver.

Hopefully you've learned your lesson, and remember - this is not an coincidence that it happened. I'd be extremely cautious with all investments involving BTC, even if the other party seems trustworthy, let alone this kind of obvious scam setup.

I don't really understand how this necessarily ties into decentralization, because as far as I know, this can be done with centralized platforms already.

I think there are still some services or components of services that require the centralized nature of these marketplaces in order to function smoothly, such as customer support, such as conflict resolution between the buyer and the seller.

In the future, if decentralized marketplaces that carry these sort of features do pop up, then sure. The fees could be taken away from the middleman, and these centralized marketplaces could see drastic changes in their business conditions. But just like decentralized exchanges, we see various issues in terms of practical use at the moment still. Not everything in my opinion absolutely needs to be decentralized immediately. The most important aspect is still decentralizing the currency and the processing of payments, imho.

The biggest advantage that I could think of for the government themselves to implement this system would be that they would have a much stronger grasp over the economy, as they would be able to track and manipulate each and every transaction and token/currency that circulates around the blockchain due to the centralized nature of the currency blockchain that they've set up.

Obviously for citizens, all the advantages of cashlessness would apply. Increased convenience, etc. Almost exactly the same as electronic banking, no difference here for the end user.

But you have to ask yourself - is this necessarily something that you'd like to adopt - a centralized cryptocurrency that is issued by the government? Wouldn't that be the same as any other fiat currency, just spawned in a different format? To me, it makes much more sense to hold onto decentralized alternatives than to jump on board national cryptos like the Petro, even if it was issued by a more trustworthy government.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that volatility is something positive.

But clearly, it's not something that is as bad as some exaggerate it to be. Just let me give you an example - I'd rather hold an asset that will retain most of its value and not have its currency supply debased in the long run, compared to something that may seem like it's stable in the short term, but in fact in the long run has always shown the tendency to move down in value.

Honestly, it's what you get with a free floating currency that has no ties to any central authority. With the way things are going, I really see no issue with this even if it's not positive. Merchants accept BTC right now based on their USD value which is not that great, but protects them against any rate fluctuations. And in the future, with more adoption, volatility would lessen by itself.

I would still be fairly cautious in any bullish predictions at this point in time. The market is still extremely sluggish and even though we have seen some pumps in the past few weeks, these have not sustained long enough to make an impact with the reversal of the bearish trend, and each and every time has seen a correction take down the prices.

Now, based on previous bear markets, we could possibly see bitcoin prices dip even further before the recovery late next year or even in 2020.

Perhaps I'm just being extremely pessimistic, but this is how I see things going at the moment. The $6k support is still yet to be broken but I think it's quite likely that at some stage, it will. But this is all the more reason to buy and accumulate BTC for the long run right now imo.

100% not unless you know what you're doing.

Bitmex is not for everyday traders. You're not going to be able to purchase bitcoin with the fiat you've got in hand which I assume is what you'd like to do. Bitmex is a platform that is more targeted towards full time traders who want to trade derivatives that are linked to bitcoin price whether positively or inversely, but does not act as an actual exchange. Contracts are not even withdrawable as actual BTC.

I'd suggest staying away if you're trading with small amounts. The withdrawal fees per my experience are quite high and if you don't know what you're doing, you could seriously stuff things up as 1Referee mentions. If you are actually in fact looking for a reliable place to trade bitcoin with fiat currencies, I'd look at localbitcoins for options first.

You're completely right. I'm not a big fan of stablecoins either because it either relies on trust of a centralized entity, like Tether, while still having to trust that the fiat you're holding won't lose value dramatically, or the trust of a certain decentralized process, like BitUSD.

But it does play a role in some scenarios.

For example, in countries such as India where the government and the central bank has cracked down on bitcoin transactions, they have relied on stablecoins as a proxy in order to trade fiat against crypto. Of course, I would never consider stablecoins as a legitimate decentralized long term storage of wealth, nor am I concerned about bitcoin's fluctuations at the moment. I completely agree with the statement that with enough adoption, bitcoin will see intrinsic stability.

I don't think that this is something that is realistic, at all.

Firstly, you have to understand that this is not something that is decentralized and any one of these organizations could possibly go rogue and print more currency than necessary, encounter security issues with counterfeiting, become corrupt, etc. This is as opposed to cryptocurrencies which are decentralized because of code, and a single entity never has the right to print more bitcoin at will.

Also, who's to say that these notes will have value? I doubt that people would place the same trust in them as they would in bitcoin due to the fact that they're not as decentralized at all. Besides, governments would surely crack down on these organizations, seizing the assets of these places potentially.