If you are looking to sell, then I'd definitely go with a P2P option of some sort.

Obviously Localbitcoins would be your first option. However, just make sure that you do check on the reputation of the buyer before you sell your coins, and also ensure that you're getting a relatively safe payment method (For example, paypal is not safe as it is completely reversible). You can also trade p2p with a range of users on this forum, however, the rates are generally very bad. Other options like Paxful, Hodlhodl and bisq can also be considered.

Though if you want PM, Advcash etc. go to bestchange.com. There is a list of them that are generally anonymous. Selling BTC anonymously is much easier than buying, so you do have a lot of options.

Personally, I think that if ETFs get approved in a bull market, then there is every possibility that we'll see some FOMO buying and soaring prices as a result of that.

However, I doubt that it would all of a sudden mean that we'll see a new all time high if the ETF was to be approved during this stretch of bearish market sentiment. Besides, it'll be extremely difficult for any ETF proposals to get approved in the first place based on the precedents set beforehand with the rejection of multiple ETFs.

Honestly, the impact of such approvals are greatly exaggerated. Even if one does get approved, somehow during this bear market, we may see some short term price movements but it wouldn't impact much after the hype is over.

I really doubt that the supreme court would be able to take a completely unbiased stance at this matter. Or, they may just keep delaying the verdict infinitely, which essentially means that nobody can buy/sell BTC in the meantime.

Of course I'd like to see this ban being uplifted but at the moment, there are two main possibilities. One is that the ban will continue and be justified by the supreme court. The other is that some sort of VAT tax will be instated upon bitcoin transactions.

I honestly don't see any logic behind banning bitcoin, although India seems to push the idea that bitcoin is used for illegal stuff. To me, that's complete BS. Illegal activities are not a result of bitcoin, at all.

It's hard to say or predict for certain, obviously. Right now, $6k is probably easily the strongest support that bitcoin's got.

And so far it has proven to be the bottom. However, there is also every possibility that the bear market may go down further and break the current bottom of around $6k as people irrationally dump their coins.

The question is really whether $6k will hold up or not. I think that it could really be going both ways. But this shouldn't even matter if you're planning on holding for the long term, which I think is probably the best strategy to take right now. $6k is going to close to the bottom, if not the actual bottom. Doing dollar cost averaging near these prices would be a good idea, imo.

I really doubt it.

In fact it's probably the exact opposite, with or without ETF being approved, bitcoin is more likely to see some more corrections, consolidation and sideways movement before finally starting its true recovery.

There is still a lot of bearish sentiment within the market, with not a whole lot of bullish momentum. Besides, bear markets previously (after the 2013 crash, that is) have usually been around a year or longer. We're not close to that timeframe, yet. Resistance at $8-10k is still high, and this has been tested in previous attempts to break out.

So yeah, there could be small rallies here and there within the next few months but I expect prices to not move much. Great accumulation opportunity, though.

I don't think that crypto or bitcoin alone would be able to necessarily increase the welfare of individuals directly by handing them aid or stuff like that, but it could certainly happen in a variety of ways with a global currency like bitcoin.

The most prominent example would be that bitcoin allows for people from less developed countries with cheap labor forces to access employment opportunities worldwide, and therefore, increase their standard of living.

The combination of bitcoin as the payment method/medium of excahnge and the internet allows this to happen, and this can occur throughout the world regardless of borders because of bitcoin's global nature. Bitcoin, in contrast to other payment processors like Paypal, do not restrict access just because you don't have ID or you don't have a valid bank account to attach to your account, which means that it's much more accessible by less developed nations. Besides, you also don't need to pay fees, or deal with exchange rate risk as much.

Depends on what you consider as a financial crisis.

But really, after a long period of economic growth there will always be troughs. That's how the cycle goes. Even if you don't see the immediate reason for concern, a financial crisis will occur sooner or later. That's what comes with periods of growth without corrections.

I don't know when the next one is going to come, how large the scale is, or even what causes it. But it'll most certainly happen in one form or another, whether hyperinflation, a recession, or anything else. That's why I think it's very important to hedge your assets by investing in an independent decentralized currency, like bitcoin, especially in a scenario where fiat is depreciating overnight on a daily basis.

I mean, what else would you expect?

Bitcoin is still in its very early adopter phases and right now, we're seeing bitcoin used primarily for speculation purposes. That's definitely true. However, it doesn't mean at all that bitcoin will not be able to fulfill the role of a currency, especially in the future where merchant adoption will increase with time.

I'd say that it's a complete non-issue. If you looked back 2 years you would have found that this percentage was significantly lower with even more speculation going on back then. The lack of merchants accepting bitcoin is the primary reason for this low figure, in my opinion, and merchants will come with time. People need time to realize the flaws of fiat, and the merits of BTC. Doens't happen overnight.

Bitcoin moves independently of other cryptos. Even though you may have saw that other cryptos get influenced by bitcoin's pricing at the past, there isn't really a permanent correlation. Besides, bitcoin dominance has been at all time lows last year and this year, meaning that bitcoin will most likely in my opinion see more recovery in the near future compared to other cryptos.

However, don't expect this bitcoin rally to continue permanently.

I don't think we're getting out of the bear market fully at the moment, and the correction has obviously brought down BTC to the $7.5k mark again. Although some are suggesting that this will be the start of the BTC bull market, I believe we're still far from it at this stage.

There are some claims that they make that I'm pretty sure are all false as well, including the fact that they have over a community of over 10000 investors despite them not even finishing their ICO yet. That to me is a pretty absurd number considering that most legit projects don't even have that many active adopters.

Of course, there's also the fact that they apparently offer an investment fund, but don't have any business model that can clearly explain how they make their profits legitimately. Combine that with their anonymous team (or most likely no team at all), it's definitely a shady and probably a scam.

They claim that they are the first "decentralized" fund, which they are not. Once you send funds to their ETH address, your funds are in their centralized control, and the value of their shady tokens base entirely on their ability to pay out, which they probably won't do.

Of course, there are enough warning signs just by looking at his threads.

People that fall for these types of scams are usually going to be users that don't even have an account on teh forum yet, because if you aren't signed in, you can't look at people's trust ratings. YoutubeTV is already tagged by many users as a scammer.

There is a reason why the sticky in the digital goods section is there - self moderated threads that are also locked can pretty much be regarded as a scam just by looking at it. Buying gift cards itself is an extremely risky practice, I wouldn't even recommend purchasing GCs with untrusted users even with the protection of escrow due to the high amount of fraudulent gift cards circulating around these days.

Great stuff, OP.

I don't even know what the problem they are trying to resolve through their project, or what purpose their project will serve. Usually when the whole underlying idea is this vague, the ICO itself is probably nothing but a money making machine for the admins who will at best, deliver the promised product and just move onto the next project. And of course, fake teams are an instance sign of a scam, as they do not want to seem to be unprofessional as they don't have any real past experiences, or are planning an exit scam.

It's becoming a trend recently that scam ICOs are increasingly trying to fabricate their team, and the trails are usually left behind on the team photos. Always do research on the photos, if you are an investor.

I think that overall, this is a positive evaluation of crypto.

However, a lot of the things mentioned that they specifically put onto cryptocurrencies such as money laundering and tax evasion can be said with all fiat currencies as well. Bitcoin is simply a currency. There are probably more people evading tax using cash compared to use bitcoin, etc. There is no point trying to assign the blame of the issues on crypto.

Also, I don't know what they're referring to as a global financial stability risk. I don't see anything this negative that would come out of bitcoin, at least.

It's only a statement, but it does show that G20 seems to be interested in crypto. Hopefully though, they will be supporting decentralized cryptos and increased exchange regulations, instead of trying to push for stricter KYC/AML measures and centralized blockchains.

I think that the bear market will continue to at least the end of the year in terms of bitcoin prices.

However, it wouldn't be necessarily solely because of the ETF being rejected. The market isn't as sensitive to that news anymore to put it simply, after SEC rejected several requests for ETFs previously. This is just a sequel to that.

Just looking at the price history of bitcoin from the 2014 bear market, i think that it is clear there just isn't enough time elapsed for us to consider this bear market to have bottomed and the recovery taking place at the moment. It's very likely that this current rally will not last very long and will correct sooner or later, regardless of the ETF results. Just my 2 cents.

Yes, plenty of people.

If you did some research before you used poloniex then you would have definitely found a lot of negative reviews surrounding their support in general. They are quite unresponsive and will take a long time to answer your queries.

For me, it took them 2 weeks to sort out something as simple as a withdrawal that is awaiting approval - and I'm one of the lucky ones. Your 4 months is definitely unacceptably long for a support case. May I ask what the problem was that has led you to contacting support in the first place? Have they replied to you or not at all?

Some screenshots would be helpful. But even with the recent circle acquisition i can't say that poloniex has gotten a lot better.

This is a good initiative in my opinion. It's got decent discounts on gift card purchases while still retaining the trust and legitimacy of buying gift cards from a trusted source instead of from a random person, which is probably going to be fraudulent.

I definitely think that this is available currently in way less countries than it should be accessible in, considering that only 5 countries in Europe essentially have access to this.


Exactly this. I don't really see this attracting any new customers to coinbase per se, but it'll just be a convenient and trusted way of obtaining gift cards using BTC, something of a grey area if you deal with someone p2p.

I don't think that the trading volume is going to be an accurate prediction index for what's going to happen in the future. Especially the volume measured in fiat currency, it is bound to go up when there is a small rally anyways.

The real question here is whether or not we're breaking into bullish territory with this small rally that was seen in the past few days.

To me, I think that we are still some distance from that. The bear market has only carried on for around 7 months at this stage, and previous bear markets have shown that they have lasted much longer before the final bottom and recovery. Especially when you see that $7.5 k resistance seems to be pretty strong still.

There are negative reviews, but it definitely doesn't prove them to be scam.

However, I definitely would not invest in their project. They are heavily promoting it right now on all mainstream venues which means that they are trying to pitch their idea to people who primarily do not even know how cryptos work.

Besides, when someone raised a very valid question, they deleted the reply from their self moderated thread. That's not trustworthy behaviour in my opinion, since it seems like they're just censoring all negative opinions towards their platform. To me, they're most likely using some sort of thread bumping service since the discussion going on is pretty much between shills from a glance.

Also as you said there is plenty of negative reviews on expertoptions, but that alone doesn't prove that it's a scam.

Yes. But when you are dealing with someone with such a tarnished reputation and with an extremely high risk digital good (Bitmain coupons), I think that the risks that you reduce through using escrow is worth a lot more than the time you may spend waiting for one.

You have to assume that most people who approach you on digital goods section are scammers, if they have a negative trust rating or they're lower ranked. There is no point taking that risk imho sending first.


It's not meaningless. It just doesn't automatically mean someone is legit, if you know what I mean. Especially when you saw that he had negative ratings on his trust profile, his reputation is already worthless. Always do research, and don't be afraid to ask around before you do a deal or especially send first.

How is bitcoin technology outdated?

You have to understand that bitcoin only aims to be a decentralized and trustless currency, and anything else would be out of the scope of the bitcoin network. What other projects are trying to do with bolckchain right now is completely irrelevant, and doesn't mean that bitcoin is outdated or useless.

Bitcoin's value comes from the fact that it's intrinsically limited in supply, and this can't be manipulated, and its decentralization. It also comes from the fact that it's the first cryptocurrency, with probably the most practicality and adoption at the moment. It's not outdated, in fact, I think we're still in the early adopter phase of things. That's why bitcoin is valuable.