It's really nothing new to the bitcoin community. We've been doing this for years now on the lending subforum where bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies can be used as collateral for a fixed fiat currency loan.

Loans offered that way is exactly what this bank is doing, here. Obviously, the scale is going to be much bigger and it might even be targeting big time traders or institutions, but the principle is the same.

They mention tax advantages in the article, which is a huge plus instead of cashing out and incurring a capital gain. There may well be more institutions offering these types of loans in the future given the continued recognition of bitcoin as a liquid form of currency.

I wouldn't say that bitcoin is going to be this stable for too long. It is only stable now because we're seeing a phase of consolidation where the market tends to move sideways without much fluctuation due to the lack of interest that investors are showing at the moment.

You can see pretty much the same thing happen in 2014-2015 before bitcoin bottomed.

To me, there is no apparent advantages nor disadvantages that come with this period of stability because it is most likely going to temporary. I think that it is very likely we'll see some form of dip take prices down below the current support soon before the recovery comes. The only point I could think of is that it may be good for merchants who deal exclusively in bitcoin without converting into fiat, but even in that case, they would have been prepared to deal with volatility anyways.

I don't think that bitcoin fits into the mold of either commodity currency or fiat currency.

Though bitcoin has the store of value aspect of commodity currencies or commodity backed currencies, it is really not something that you can use physically for a purpose.

Yet, just like gold, its value is derived from the fact that there is a limited supply, no one can mess with that supply, and the trust that people have within BTC as the first cryptocurrency out there. I think the best definition that one can give is simply decentralized cryptocurrency. Also unlike fiat currencies, there is no central entity that is able to manipulate the issuance of currency in the form of notes or online, which is what makes bitcoin have so much potential economically.

I wouldn't put too much money into silver/gold simply because I believe that crypto has a lot more potential in the long run, and that crypto is most likely going to replace the traditional roles played by precious metals within the market as a safe haven in the future.

However, I really can't say that you could go too bad with investing in them as a hedge against inflation - they are exactly that, and even though they will probably never outpace the growth of crypto, they will still hold up their value much better than fiats will in the long term.

But if you do invest, all I can say is only invest in physical metals. Buying ETFs or derivatives defeats the purpose of this "safe haven", imo.

I've personally bought with credit cards on a variety of platforms, including Virwox.

I've never had a problem with it. You'll get absolutely BS rates in terms of the premium that you are paying when paying with credit cards, as well as the credit card fees themselves. But to my knowledge, as long as you pay your credit cards off on time I honestly don't see any issues.

There are certain providers who do block crypto exchanges, but you won't even be able to purchase in the first place if your bank has blocked it. There is a slight risk that your card will get locked, sure, and if you're extremely worried then give your bank a call.

If you do have a debit card though, attached to a bank account, then use that to purchase your bitcoins. It's your own money and banks can't do anything about it.

It was really not what he mentioned would be the future trend back in June, with the obvious contrast between the bullish predictions then and the quite bearish predictions right now. Another reason you shouldn't really follow any of these analysts or CEOs, because they honestly are not any more qualified than most experienced bitcoin users.

But based on the current trends I really wouldn't be surprised if the bull market doesn't come until a year or two later.

The 2013 bear market obviously has shown significant lengths of time used for recover before the actual bull market broke out. However, we can probably expect the prices to bottom out in the next year or so, that I think is a given.

I think that the most likely scenario is that both will indeed work in parallel.

While governments may not directly endorse bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies, I can see that in the future more adoption would mean that bitcoin could realistically become a medium of exchange for online activities in particular, potentially serving a niche of people who need to facilitate global online transactions as well as people seeking a safe haven to store wealth in the long run. It is still far fetched to say that it's going to replace all fiat globally at this stage.

Also, with the development of national blockchains that are centralized and controlled by the government, the last option is possible as well. However, I don't think this brings any value to people as it would be pretty much the same as online banking right now, except using blockchain technology.

This isn't really anything related to bitcoin at all.

You scam anyone out of a certain amount of money above a threshold that depends on the country you're in, you'd go to jail for it. It doesn't matter whether this scam is conducted with bitcoin or not, even though the means of payment in this case, is indeed, bitcoin.

Anyways, the latest development seems to indeed indicate that they have reached private settlement and that the scammers will not be held accountable for their actions. However, with the irreversible nature of bitcoin, not everyone is going to get lucky like this. Be careful when you get pitched the idea of investing, especially when it's online and you are paying in an irreversible means of payment.

Indeed. The headline is pretty much completely out of context of what was actually being told in the article.

The guy is being rational and saying that bitcoin isn't going to be something that can succeed, guaranteed, and he even goes to mention how he personally thinks that bitcoin will have more chance of success than it tumbling to zero or whatnot. Yet bloomberg makes this seem extremely negative. Classic cherrypicking indeed.


I think this statement made by him is pretty realistic, unlike many other commentators and public figures within maintsream media talking about bitcoin. BTC is more likely to run parallel as an alternative to fiat, than to replace it altogether imo in the future.

If your account gets suspended it is possibly because of outstanding disputes with your trades, and/or that your account is suspected of being used for fraudulent purposes.

I guess the only way that you would be able to get it unsuspended would be to contact support. Their technical team are the only ones that can help you in this case. Send a message asking them why your account was suspended and the steps you are able to take on your end to get it resolved. Wait for a response.

Just be prepared for this to potentially drag on though, because paxful certainly doesn't have the best support out of them all.

Well, there are already institutional investors that are coming in at this stage believe it or not, in the middle of the bear market.

The thing is that there are people who are invested in bitcoin in order to speculate, and there are people who actually believe in the technology behind it, which most people on this forum I assume are. It's probably not wise to generalize the bitcoin investors worldwide into any single category for their motivations.

The thing is though, that bitcoin moves in cycles and last year saw some pretty crazy bullish growth which was admittedly unsustainable. This year, that's why we see the bear market kicking in. A bull market will re-enter as soon as this bearish sentiment clears, which I think will definitely take a year or two further based on historical trends, but will happen sooner or later.

Is it just me, or are the people in charge of the advertisements the ones who came up with the comments regarding bitcoin, but not anything official from Google itself? That was what I saw from the article.

Anyhow, whoever made these comments should take a look at their fiat currency.

If you argue that bitcoin isn't "real money", then fiat currencies are literally even worse being just pieces of paper that can be issued at any time by the government. At least bitcoin has a supply cap, in that regard. But it does goes to show that the people making the advertisements (not necessarily google) do not have a good understanding of the merits of BTC whatsoever.

From what I've heard they've already taken down the bitcoin ATMs, there has apparently been definitely some legal issues with the installation of the ATMs it seems.

I'd say that it was a far fetched idea at best anyways. The fact is that it was a matter of time before the RBI would catch onto what Unocoin is doing, and since it does involve fiat currencies if I understand correctly, they're extra sensitive about it.

With the current climate regarding cryptocurrencies in India it's for sure a risky proposition for any company to try to start their own bitcoin ATMs or even just continue to operate their existing businesses, which is sad tbh.

Shorting is a risky proposition I think no matter what market you are in.

Sure, the stock market is probably overbought right now and a correction is due at any time. However, there is no guarantee that your short position would be able to last long enough to be able to make a profit on a crash. Further crashes could simply not come until much later, you never know.

But I would certainly seek to diversify into other assets if the majority of my wealth is tied up in stocks at the moment, including diversifying into bitcoin. It's only a matter of time before the bear market comes in shares imo.

The current trend of stability will most likely be short lived.

I do agree that stability is probably needed for mainstream adoption, but I don't think that it's an issue at the moment. People are still adopting bitcoin as a form of storing value because it is easier to access compared to a lot of the foreign currencies in countries that are suffering from hyperinflation.

But indeed, in order to achieve stability there needs to be more adoption, and the only way to see that is time. There isn't really anything we can do to speed this process up in my opinion, nor is should this be any cause of concern as volatility is simply a part of the bear/bull market cycles that is imminent within all assets, especially in decentralized ones.

Absolutely not. Bitcoin will stabilize in the future if its market cap continues to increase and the market matures, sure. But it will never become a stablecoin.

A stablecoin has to be backed by something external, like the USD. Bitcoin is not backed by anything but its own value, which means that even if its value continues to stabilize in terms of USD, it will never truly be stable as it is not pegged to fiat currencies via a central pegging mechanism.

That's honestly one of the advantages of using bitcoin as a store of value as well, it's completely separate from the fiat system and even though there is short term volatility, in the long run it should hold its value due to its limited supply.

There were obviously a multitude of factors that is influencing this.

I seriously doubt that it is illegal in most countries to sell low amounts of BTC on p2p trading platforms for personal use. Besides, it would just be too much hassle for the police to chase you up for such minuscule amounts, it's just not worth their time whatsoever.

Whenever you are dealing on such a large scale and potentially evading tax and not reporting to the regulators you have the risk of going through this, and we have seen precedents of this as well. Just use your common sense here. I wonder though if $800,000 that he forfeited was all the profits he had or if there was more.

I actually just watched a few videos where some people labelled bitcoin as ponzis.

Honestly, I think that they're confusing a ponzi scheme and a bubble. Bitcoin's prices were sky high last year and obviously retrospectively was in a bubble, but this doesn't mean that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme simply because of that.

I don't know why certain individuals would rather believe in something centralized that can be completely manipulated and destroyed by the government or the central bank (just look at Venezuela as an example), rather than a currency that is decentralized and with a limited supply in bitcoin. Makes no sense to me.

It's definitely targeted at high end institutional investors, it seems. It's really not going to be affecting the way average bitcoin users transact on a daily basis for payments for goods.

The idea of something centralized holding the bitcoins for the user has been along for a long time now and I guess this is simply a product that is geared towards big time investors, as opposed to hosted wallets which basically does the same function without the receipts but doesn't really target whales.

I would personally never be interested in this type of product simply because I'd be handing over control of my coins, and defeats the purpose of bitcoins in the first place. It could be different for speculators who believe in centralized insurance of their money and aren't actually interested in investing in bitcoin itself, however.

I definitely think that as the block rewards halve every 4 years, the market will also become more and more stable.

Not just because the fact that the inflation rate of bitcoin is continuously decreasing to the point that the supply becomes stable, but also because people's expectations about bitcoin would also mature over that period of time. No longer would bitcoin be considered to be some form of get rich quick scheme, which it absolutely is not, but rather a viable form of currency and store of value.

That's what is going to happen when the supply of bitcoin maxes out, in my opinion. But intrinsically there shouldn't be much changes to BTC at all.