I would not be comfortable with trading with them, unless I was somehow protected by Localbitcoins escrow.

Sending first to a site that is completely unknown as doesn't have any reputation is just way too risky in my opinion. Even if you do receive the promised bitcoin, which I believe there is a high likelihood that you won't, you have much safer options to go along with.

Just look at this page: http://s.instantbit.co/?product=bitcoin-btc-localbitcoins-trade-rate. Clearly, they have not spent much time into designing the site at all, nor do the layout of the site make any sense to me whatsoever. Don't choose an exchanger solely based on their rates.

Absolutely. Bitcoin prices usually move in such cycles of bull/bear markets.

I don't think this should be surprise anyone and more experienced speculators because this has happened before many times, including the 2013 bear market. It also happens quite frequently outside of the bitcoin realm, with bear and bull market sentiment affecting prices regularly in stock markets as well as real estate as well.

Since market sentiment is so low and bearish, we are seeing a period of dips and sluggishness in general, quite similar to the 2013 scenario. To me, I think that the recovery may take less time this time round due to the fact that bitcoin is more mature and institutional investors, but it will still take a while before bullish reversal actually happens. 2020's halving will be an interesting phase for the recovery of BTC for sure.

Exactly. I like your point about TA being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that's exactly what it is.

It's almost like a pump and dump group. When people think that a prediction is going to right, they are going to buy into it. And the larger the platform that some analysts have, the more likely their predictions they make will

I'd say that anything that is out of the scope of the long term pricing trend is quite irrelevant for bitcoin. There are going to be different market conditions in the very short run that are just completely random and unpredictable, and there are people trying to use TA to cover that. Is it negatively affecting traders, especially inexperienced ones that are blindly believing in it.

Bear markets are a natural part of the market cycle and you simply can't change that.

So it's really completely irrelevant whether or not this year was a waste or not, because of the fact that there is nothing that people can do within the market. Yes, prices are going down. But that's only natural when the entire market is pessimistic.

Also, I'd like to mention that institutional investors have actually to show more interest within bitcoin this year despite the bear market, and some regulations have matured with the growth of adoption as well. In no way is this year a "waste", it's a non-issue.

Markets are still consolidating at the moment.

I doubt that a bull market will emerge by the end of the year at this stage because there are simply no signs of a trend reversal, and the last bear market did take around one and a half years before it actually bottomed.

2017 is something special because it was the biggest bull market we've seen in BTC, and there was a lot of FOMO which accounted for the growth. That simply can't be compared to this year where a huge correction started the year and the sentiment continues to be bearish.

Expect the market to be stagnant for at least a few more months, potentially with dips along the way until we test the $6k support or find a new bottom. But bull market right now seems extremely unlikely.

I don't believe that it'll have a noticeable affect on the crypto market at all.

Prices might drop a bit across the board because some of the trading volume is indeed with other currencies which are weak in relation to the dollar right now, but I don't think that is going to be a huge factor with pricing within the market.

The most pain felt is going to be in the imports of other countries, but they will benefits on the exports.

It's also interesting that silver and gold actually went up in USD terms, but that may have been as a result of the stock market crash leading to people scrambling to a safe haven.

I laughed at this article. But it's not the first time that someone has tried to claim that bitcoin is dying, or already dead.

What we are in right now should be apparent to anyone with the slightest experience with bitcoin or even trading. We're in a bear market right now which indeed means that prices are going nowhere and not growing as much as it was last year within the bull market.

But you have to realize that bitcoin is not dead by any means, it's not like the technology side of bitcoin is all of a sudden fading away or it's becoming completely useless, or adoption levels are waning. It's not of that. It's just the sentiment within the market is bearish right now, and that leads to prices being lower, which is completely normal.

This is only a check that you have to comply with at customs.

It has nothing to do with new restrictions in terms of bringing bitcoins into the country or even holding bitcoins. That in itself does not cinstitute any crime, so even if they search your phone and find bitcoin wallets or addresses, they can't prosecute you unless the state laws say that.

But it probably has security concerns if you do hold bitcoins on your phone, you're letting people access your private keys potentially without you knowing whether it's stolen. And also it raises huge issues in terms of privacy principles. So for that reason, I'd still be extremely careful in wiping bitcoin data off your device before you enter.

I think that regulation for exchanges are probably needed due to the fact that there are simply so many of  these scam exchanges out there that are taking user funds or selectively scamming users on a daily basis.

Having a regulation code for them is going to potentially help people understand the risks and also better credit the legitimacy of such businesses.

However, even with that said, education is far more important than regulation in this sense because there will still be unregulated entities, and if people are not educated, they could still use these shady exchanges.

But as to regulation on bitcoin itself, I don't think that's possible nor feasible, nor wanted within the community. Only services that are centralized can be regulated effectively.

This is an obvious case.

It might not even be related to bitcoin mining per se, because of the fact that the main crime here is stealing electricity. If you steal electricity from the state grid for any purpose, you should obviously be expecting some of prosecution to come your way once they find out.

However, I still don't know if this case was aggravated by the fact that bitcoin mining has all kinds of restrictions within China and various mining firms have moved overseas. Still very ambiguous what exactly the restrictions are, in my opinion.

I honestly don't think that a bull run of any particular magnitude is due to happen this year.

The facts are simple, prices are still relatively stagnant and even when there may be short periods where growth happens, it's still of an extremely small volume and has never lasted long enough for it to be considered to be a trend reversal.

Besides, the bearish sentiment pretty much prevents all of this from happening I believe in the near future, as we've seen another correction hit us recently.

Of course, it would be different if the time frame was expanded. I wouldn't doubt that the recovery would come next year, but definitely not this year imo.

There is ton, these are all payment processors that deal with fiat such as PM, Payeer, Advcash etc. which are quite shady and I'm sure it's probably not what you're looking for. If you are, there are a lot of them out there on bestchange.

I think you're best to use localbitcoins if you're talking about bank deposits or transfers here.

They offer the most protection using escrow compared to just sending your money over to an unknown entity and you'll get the best rates. While there are international exchangers that accept wire transfers or WU transfers without KYC, they're quite shady and I wouldn't recommend them.

Lack of communication resulting from a completely unresponsive support seems to be the primary issue that Bitfinex faces.

Also with the fact that their entire fiat currency deposit and withdrawal is just completely screwed up long before your complaints and even more so right now, it pretty much means that they are not a safe exchange to use right now.

You could reach out to them on other platforms, but I think warning others via this forum is the best you can do at the moment apart from keep trying to communicate via a support channel. They're being quite unreasonable especially when you've listed a refund in USD on their platform as an option, which can be done instantly.

If anyone claims that they are going to be able to give you these types of returns, they are trying to scam you.

That's the simple truth here. No one here is trying to slam you, they are speaking the truth. Only ponzis or scams will ever claim that they are able to make that type of money in such a short period of time. Remember that HYIPs are just another word for ponzis.

I'm sure that you probably lost money on these types of schemes before, perhaps that's why you're looking for these investments in the first place. There are no free lunches in the world, I'd suggest you stop spending energy trying to look for a service that does this.

I wonder if online crowdfunding with tokens could see some small businesses choosing to start off this way instead of holding IPOs.

I doubt that the stock exchanges would necessarily end any time soon, and even if stocks as the form of value within a company becomes an unpopular idea due to its high entrance requirements and so on, there will still be other similar platforms taking its place, such as tokens.

Obviously, raising funds privately would always be an alternative to a public sale. But I think that there will always be demand in terms of speculating on these companies, which obviously brings a ton of institutions its profits.

It could still happen in the future, but obviously nothing has happened on this day.

I wonder if their vision was some form of world central bank or government issuing this Phoenix, or if it was something decentralized and p2p like bitcoin. If it was the latter, then I'd argue that we've already seen enough adoption globally to call BTC a truly global currency both theoretically, as well as practically.

But if the former, it'll be hard to see national fiat currencies going away any time soon and the formation of a global currency like this would obviously require an authority to enforce its value, which is still a far fetched idea for now.

It's not just the prices increasing either, it's a lot more than that.

We've seen huge amounts of adoption, both on an institutional scale and on an individual scale, come into the bitcoin ecosystem. There has been increased merchant acceptance of bitcoin as well. Liquidity of bitcoin has improved to the point that you can essentially travel the world with simply bitcoin and p2p trading wherever you go.

It's been a huge decade and I'd say that the growth is not slowing down. And this also gives you a nice long term perspective on things given the fact that a lot of people are worried about this current bear market. When you zoom out, this really doesn't matter at all. These bear markets will come to an end eventually, and at the end of the day, prices will go up in the long term as long as demand/user base increases.

Wouldn't this come across as fairly obvious? As prices of bitcoins drop and the markets not in a frenzy like it was last year, it should be clear that mining would not be as profitable as it was in the pinnacle of the bull market.

I honestly don't see reasons to be concerned at all by this matter.

Otherwise, you'd be saying that the 2014-15 bear market would have destroyed the entire mining industry as figment mentioned, but it clearly came back a lot stronger and hash rate continued to increase at rapid paces once the markets swung in the bullish side of the pendulum again. These are obvious cycles that denote nothing of importance in the long run imho.

I wouldn't say that bitcoin's bear market has any direct ties to "consumer interest".

What we are experiencing right now is simply a natural part of the market, which is a correction after a bull market. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and this has happened before with the 2014 bear market happening after the 2013 bull market which saw ATH price levels as well.

I'd say that 90% of actual bitcoin adopters(that is people that aren't just around in the bull market to make money) are still holding onto their coins and demonstrating interest in bitcoin, they're not just all of a sudden not interested anymore. Besides, institutional interest within bitcoin is at an all time high as well, so there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

You simply can't get "without verification" and "low fees" in the same sentence.

Otherwise, the exchange will be faced with huge amounts of fraudulent exchange activity which they won't even get rewarded on. It's simply not a sustainable business model for them.

I'd say that if you truly want to buy BTC without any form of verification, the best rates that you're going to get is Virwox rates/Localbitcoins/Paxful/xcoins. Compare the rates but generally you'll find them to be pretty steep in terms of fees. Other than that I honestly don't think you can do much more given the prerequisite of no verification.