Are these assets actually backed by bitcoin, or are they just pegged by Citibank to bitcoin's value or an index of cryptos?

These are questions that haven't yet been covered in the article, it seems. For now, it would seem to me that it's just another bitcoin derivative type of stuff that is aimed at speculating on the bitcoin markets. I would not get too excited about this news given that the best route to invest in bitcoin is still buying actual bitcoins instead of investing through a bank.

But it would be interesting to see whether this could actually go around existing regulatory concerns, if yes, then perhaps the ETF doesn't matter as much as people think at all.

These statistics are not surprising, when you see that all of the respondents are in fact crypto enthusiasts already.

I mean, on a global scale, there is really no advantages of getting paid in fiat if you're already investing into bitcoin. For one, buying bitcoin could prove to be extremely difficult given all the KYC process and all the fees involved, so why not just get paid directly with it? Secondly, if your employer is overseas, then sending funds via bitcoin would likely be a much cheaper and convenient option that will take much less time.

However, actual domestic corporations probably won't start paying out wages any time soon given the lack of knowledge on how to use bitcoin, as well as the lack of awareness of the benefits. For such, I think only freelancers will see the practical benefits of bitcoin at the moment as they generally work for overseas employers.

Didn't Goldman Sachs just recently stated their worries with their trading desk project or whatnot with regulatory concerns? Yet they seem to still be extremely interested in the speculative aspect of bitcoin still.

It's also interesting that apparently their clients are requesting for bitcoin derivatives instead of actual bitcoins.

I don't know why these people do not want to trade actual, real bitcoins on an exchange. Most likely, it's because of the fact that bitcoin derivatives can be more easily manipulated as a tool for large scale market manipulation (which actual bitcoins isn't really good for), and this suits the needs of institutional investors. Not that groundbreaking news in my opinion, nor will it have a real tangible impact on the real people using the bitcoin network for payments if it was launched.

I don't think that the correlations you found are necessarily correct.

Just because a government is issuing their own national cryptocurrency which is centralized, and supportive of that (including the example of the Venezuelan Petro as you mentioned), doesn't mean that they are actually pro-decentralized cryptos whatsoever.

In fact, some countries have the complete opposite policy. For example, India has essentially restricted access to bitcoin in an attempt at getting the banks to not co-operate with bitcoin related entities, yet they're trying to look towards building their own national backed crypto.

With bitcoin as a global currency I really don't think that it's logical to point towards any particular country or state as the leader of the crypto market, though countries with favorable regulations will likely attract more innovators in this field as well as regulated entities.

The is simply no reason to use blockchain.info anymore.

It's not like implementing Segwit is that much harder if at all than moving their domain over to blockchain.com or the implementation of BCH and other altcoins on their site, which are all things they did in the meanwhile without ever touching on Segwit.

It's a broken promise to me for sure and demonstrates their lack of professionalism. As others mentioned I definitely wouldn't use coinbase for the sake of segwit even though they've got support of it because you're not in control of your own funds at all. But there's still better alternatives both online and with desktop which allow exclusive control over your private keys + segwit support.

Even though blockchain.com does allow exclusive control over your private keys, it's actually extremely hard to manage your private keys, export/import, etc. with the new updates. Also, you're going to be hit with higher fees without Segwit.

There will always be some inherent volatility with the bitcoin market, considering that it is a freely traded currency without any manipulation.

However, this volatility is only in the short term. In the long term, I'd say that bitcoin is much more stable than fiat currencies, especially those issued by countries which have a faltering economic system, such as Turkey and Venezuela. That's due to the fact that bitcoin's supply is limited, and hard coded, being unable to be manipulated by any single entity in order to debase the value of it.

Personally, short term volatility has never been a huge concern of mine, as I don't particularly care about the fiat value of my long term holdings anymore. But I think as time goes on and merchant adoption increases, the price of bitcoin should become more and more stable in the short run given that they start pricing their goods in bitcoin. However, this only comes with time. How long it will take we don't know, but I'd think that within a decade we'll see a drastic decrease in volatility already.

I actually completely agree with his comments. Finally, someone realistic and sensible talking about bitcoin.

While the bear market may still have some more time to go before it finally bottoms, I think it is evident right now that bitcoin is nearing its floor. Anything less than $4-5k in price would simply mean the buying pressure from below will boost demand and bring prices back up again.

The rallies we saw a few weeks back were essentially bull traps, though. As I've mentioned, bearish sentiment still dominates the market and it's hard for a trend reversal to happen right now. The most likely outcome is thus a dip to $3-5k, a correction upwards, and stability there before the recovery finally comes. Reason why I don't think BTC is going to stabilize at the $6k level is because there's going to still be a lot more time that will need to elapse before we're close to being done with the current bear market.

It's not dealing with technology. It's dealing with bitcoin derivatives. We don't even know if this trust/fund are actually holding bitcoins on behalf of the investors. I have a feeling that more or less they are simply trading bitcoin futures or options instead of actual, real bitcoins.

Also, this is not an ETF, which is what the SEC is primarily concerned with deciding at the moment.

I wouldn't get too hyped about this news to be honest. It's obviously not bad news considering the fact that it allows investors to get an investment into bitcoin in a tax effective way, but it's most likely not going to benefit any average bitcoin users, nor is it going to be even anything related to actual bitcoins stored on chain tbh.

I really doubt it. Not all reports are going to be accurate.

Considering that the 2013-2015 bear market lasted around half a year longer than this one has so far before any signs of bullish recovery came to the market, I think it's safe to say that it's extremely unlikely that we'll see a trend reversal by the end of the year.

Sure, there could be potentially a short term rally at any given moment near the end of the year, but I don't believe it's going to be able to be anything long term in terms of flipping the sentiment.

It's much more likely that we'll see prices recover as we get closer to 2020 as the halving gets closer. Besides, we may not have actually seen the bottom yet even though prices have settled at $6k or so for the time being, there is every chance that further dips may be coming.

We can definitely see that bitcoin have seen extremely high amounts of corporate and institutional interest over the past few years, especially sparked by last year's bull market.

However, I don't think that it's right to say that they are working together per se. These investment firms generally use bitcoin as some sort of speculative tool or even endorse centralized crypto projects that have no relation to bitcoin whatsoever. They are not actually involved in most cases with the actual use and adoption of the network, or even trading actual bitcoins, as opposed to futures, and derivatives.

The chances of bitcoin replacing fiat outright is extremely slim in the next few decades, considering that governments around the world aren't going to go anywhere most likely. At the least though I do expect bitcoin to be a accepted means of payment as an alternative to fiat worldwide, running sort of in parallel with the fiat system, with users using it to store their wealth away from an ever depreciating national fiat.

I wouldn't say that they can't "afford" a cashless society, considering that one is already pretty much in full swwing at the moment.

But there are obvious flaws to such cashless society where the cashlessness is brought through technology developed by private companies, whose technology may not suit everyone. Also, it's not really that there is a cash shortage, it's that people may get left behind when cash is no longer an option for them, and restricts them from transacting online as well.

Apart from that, obviously in the long term, cashless society discussions will definitely encompass bitcoin as one of the main viable options as well. But right now, adoption rates are still low, especially in China which has quite varied demographics.

Interesting take on the matter.

I think that it's extremely likely that most of these philanthropist projects are in fact just ways to go around tax laws in order to minimise taxes, as well as creating a better public image for the person why has built this fund himself.

Notice how he's creating a fund, and has not actually donating anything to anyone yet. I'm not saying that he won't, it's just something to take note of.

And Piggy's completely right - if Bezos does want to become a philanthropist, perhaps he should start with the most manageable and easy to change thing - the working conditions under Amazon themselves. But obviously that would cost the company and himself much more money to do and isn't as "cost effective".

Generic af "network" background that has been used on hundreds of other scam ICOs, and the overall site design just hurts my eyes.

Interestingly, they've already removed the team from their site with the claim that they'll put it up once the early bird sales end. Seems like that they've already noticed this thread and are working to scam whatever amount of funds available at this stage.

Not going to be surprising if the entire site just goes down once early bird ends as well. Good thing that you got the entire site archived so they can't say that it never happened.

The wallet demo isn't even working and they're already hosting sales, which is absurd. It's also interesting that the OP of the ANN thread has been involved with multiple scams now - perhaps he's a long term associate/contact of these fake ICOs?

The thing about the ETF is that it's merely a decision on a derivative which happens to be associated with bitcoin as the underlying asset.

Whether the SEC approves it or not isn't a direct judgement on bitcoin itself, and people need to understand that. It's not the key to long term adoption whatsoever.

And I don't really understand the fact that people are getting hyped or excited about a potential Bitcoin ETF judgement by the SEC anymore, because there is pretty much no chance that they're going to approve it with so many delays and previous decisions.

Perhaps this time won't even be the final deadline. Even if this proposal does finally get rejected, I'm sure there will be future ones. But honestly, I don't see markets responding that negatively to it because they're starting to realize too what I've said, and hype has died down surrounding the subject altogether.

I guess it is somewhat of an issue at this stage.

But it really is a non-issue in the long run, and initiatives can be taken in the short term as well to help the unbanked population in Africa in obtaining some form of financial security, especially in countries where the fiat currency may be extremely volatile and depreciative.

In the long run we all know that internet connectivity is going to be much better worldwide, Africa included. And even though connectivity is bad at the moment, the biggest problem isn't really actual adoption, but awareness of bitcoin altogether. Certain organizations could definitely help the unbanked even without a stable internet connection through services like sending bitcoin through SMS which is already a familiar concept in countries like Zimbabwe with fiat currency, until the internet situation gets better in the long run and more people gets to know BTC and adopt it, where these services will not be necessary.

Unfortunately, there are a ton of companies that are actively working against crypto marketing with terms that forbid it from being put onto their platform. It's ironic though that they're happily putting other scams, ponzis, MLMs on their platform, but not certain legit crypto content.

There's nothing we can do here, because it's the choice of the company as to their policy to remove certain advertisement content.

Sure, you could try sponsoring a youtube content creator but most are shady with promoting ponzis, and they're most likely going to be expensive. Have you tried bitcoin specific ad networks like a-ads? You might even get some more relevant traffic as well since they're mostly put onto crypto related sites, though make sure you do read up on the most recent reviews since some of these bitcoin ad network sites are scams, unfortunately.

Your last option is PTC sites, which is cheap, but going to be extremely ineffective and should be avoided. Again, look into a-ads and similar platforms. Perhaps they can be of use.

Based on reddit posts, you're likely to have been scammed.

Especially when you're already waiting for more than 48h for your money, I'd say that the chances that they are going to actually come back and refund your money or complete the transaction for you at this stage is extremely slim.

No point having vouches at this stage either, you've already sent the money.

Should have noticed that they have this absurd airdrop program running as well as a pretty shady "reviews" section on their site that should have raised alarm bells. Take this as a lesson - there are plenty of similar scams out there. Always do research, and if in doubt, don't use the site and do the deal with an escrow wherever possible.

Good job on finding this early before they go out and scam any major amounts. Since it's just starting and you've exposed them already, it would probably result in way less amount of people that would have been victims.

Anyways, the site design itself raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the site even without looking at the team in depth. It just looks absolutely terrible and anyone can tell that no amount of effort is put into design and maintainance of the site.

The loan platform is not even working, and only a demo is available. If that's not shady i don't know what is.

There is a high likelihood that they're associated with these previous scams, but it doesn't really matter. Regardless of any association, they're still scumbags.

According to a US gov site:

I think that the reason why rates are so high are most likely the fact that the government of Iran is trying to restrict people from buying foreign currencies, which makes their national currency worth less in practicality than it officially is.

That's why you see the sudden surge in prices when the government showed interest in legalizing the trading of it or whatever. People are trying to use bitcoin as a way to take capital out of rials and into foreign currencies. Thereotically you could make a profit from arbitraging the difference, but realistically, you're never going to get the official going rate for their currency when you try to exchange it back to a liquid one.

It's not really a particularly unrealistic goal in the long run, even though it is unlikely that it would be achieved in that period of time.

If we take a relatively optimistic estimate of 30 million bitcoin/crypto users (which is more than the amount of active addresses on the bitcoin network right now according to bitcoininfocharts without accounting for duplications), then it would essentially mean a 30-35 times increase in the number of crypto users in the next 5 years. But in fact, active users would be much

Even if we take into account that a new bull market will likely emerge in the next 5 years, I don't think that adoption on such a massive scale is ready to happen quite yet. Unless merchants start accepting bitcoin everywhere and awareness increases drastically, even a figure like 100 million adopters would be unlikely in half a decade.