I don't think that it's necessary for bitcoin to be considered the legal tender currency of a country, in order for it to be successful. Bitcoin's value derives from the fact that it is decentralized and has a limited, hard coded supply. Not because a government says that it has to be accepted for payments of debt and taxes. Obviously, if they want to, it can be done.

Currently, I honestly don't see any countries doing this.

What I think you mean is them using blockchain technology to create their own cryptocurrency, and moving all payments on-chain. As you mentioned, venezuela is already trying to push for this, and it is possible. China and Russia seems to be investigating into this as well, so they could potentially be next. But it's important to note that these are all still fiat currencies, just in a different form.

A tiered verification system makes the most sense to me. Each tier would have its own verification standards, e.g. tier one has to complete their personal info, and can only buy $10 worth of BTC in 24h, etc. as the limits gradually build up.

If you want a structure to reference to, look at what Virwox is doing with their verification tiers and you can take what you want from them.

Goes without saying though that this is high risk stuff you're dealing with. Make sure that you understand the risks as a lot of fraudulent paypal/cc's will be used on your site in attempt to purchase BTC.

I'm not that fond of store hours though, because isn't the idea so that you can buy BTC 24/7? Otherwise, just set up a LBC account.

This was their ANN thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2855935.0

OP of that thread has been tagged already.

I feel like that there are an increasing amount of ICOs currently that are only out there to take money. In fact, I'd say that the majority of them are. Cryptokami is only one of many exit scams in this field of investments. And they actually took down their site as well, that's how blatant they are.

Always do your research before you invest, especially with an ICO. Consider whether the things that they are pitching are plausible or not. Look at their team and see if they are legit, one by one, or if they are just stock images. Take this as a lesson learned, OP.

Bitcoin is a currency, and I think that due to its decentralized nature, it shouldn't be that affected by a recession.

Interesting fact, bitcoin was actually released in 2008 which was the year when the GFC hit.

Prices could take a hit, just like silver/gold took a small hit in 2008. But it would definitely be a lot less affected than other asset classes such as shares in my opinion. But there is also the possibility that investors will turn to bitcoin as a safe haven sort of asset, as you said, just like the role that gold is performing at the moment. In that case, BTC may even rise in adoption and as a result, value.

No idea why they are paying you less than what you are getting on another site in terms of per TH/s when you bought the contracts at the same time. But this is what you are handing over when you entered the contracts, they determine your payouts and you have no say in it. Refunding you is unlikely as well.

They did have a refund option I think for the period that they were relocating overseas due to Chinese regulations, but you didn't take that offer?

The most plausible explanation is probably the fact that your maintenance fees on your bitcoin.com contract is higher than that of Minergate's. Cloud mining has just too many risks to make it even remotely close to a good investment, imo, regardless of the site you invest on.

I don't get how you can be a serious business while having the name of batmantoken, first of all

Glancing over their site, it seems like that they behave extremely similar to known ICO scams. Their business model is entirely vague and don't seem to differ from any other project, and there is a complete lack of originality to everything that they have wrote as advantages to using their system. In short, nothing is stated clearly. Everything is done in a vague way.

No team either. their response isn't valid either from their team. If you are asking for investments seriously, then surely you'd reveal your identity instead of concealing it and showcasing your past experience. Either their team doesn't have any past experiences to showcase for, or they are planning on doing some shady stuff which they don't want people to refer back to their true identities for.

The app simulations provided on the website is created on PS, and there is no working product.

Scam/ripoff for sure. Don't ever put your money in such an obvious scam project.

I don't get how it can possibly be a trick of the investors. Nor is it that people have lost their interest in BTC. Most long term holders are in fact still holding onto their coins despite the bear market that is raging on at the moment.

It's just a natural phase of the cycle within BTC - prices are usually overheated after the halving, as the bull market comes. Then as the growth becomes unsustainably large within the market, the bear market sets in, prices dip and correct, etc. It's a temporary thing, and it definitely doesn't mean that people have lost interest or anything like that.

Now, I think that although prices are going to go down further, and $5000 is a possibility; if you're interested in investing in bitcoin you should probably start accumulation now due to the fact that prices are already near the bottom. I don't see the market as volatile in the coming weeks compared to the previous months either. It's unlikely that markets will move back up permanently without further dips down below $6k, however.

I don't think that these bitcoin debit cards that were previously able to be anonymously (namely wirex etc.) are going to come back. There will be some identification measure or another, most likely, before you are able to use them.

I also don't believe that there is going to be one card that is going to be accepted across the world since regulations in different countries are going to differ, but they are likely all going to be tightening up with regards to these prepaid bitcoin debit cards.

Anything that involves bitcoin that also is integrated to fiat (whether fiat-bitcoin exchanges, bitcoin debit cards, etc.) are going to see some pretty strict regulations in the future or they already are seen right now. The closest thing that we can get to a worldwide bitcoin debit card is probably a buying service that buys anything you wants over the internet for you in exchange for your BTC, which is something we already see offered by services. But a debit card itself? Probably not.

You're completely right.

It's seems absurd to me how many people are panicking within this bear market, and saying that it's the death of bitcoin (how many times have we heard that, as a community?) etc. There is simply no reason for doing that.

This bear market is a natural phase of the market cycle within BTC, and prices are expected to adjust. Prices are expected to dip a lot before it finally finds a bottom and recovers. That's literally how a bear market goes.

Even though I think that there is still some time before we finally start recovering, we are already very close to the price floor atm. And with all the institutional investors starting to come in despite the bear market, I think it's a good strategy to at least accumulate BTC with some of your spare funds, if not starting to accumulate at full scale if possible since prices are extremely low atm.

It's not really bitcoin's legality or regulation per se.

That is totally out of our control as a community, imo. The government will most likely regulate all the third party bitcoin service providers sooner or later, and the extent of these regulations, what they are etc. are most likely out of the control of bitcoin users alone. Plus, the effects of regulation or a country explicitly having bitcoin as "legal" instead of holding a neutral position is often exaggerated. Bitcoin is decentralized after all.

The major issue that I see is still not enough merchant adoption. Not enough merchants accept BTC at the moment, which is why a lot of people think that bitcoin is moving away from being a currency. I see this getting better with time, though.

I don't think that we've bottomed yet.

$6.7k support previously was broken, and right now we're seeing the $6k level as support. While as much as I want this to be the end of the bear market, there simply hasn't been enough time for prices to fully consolidate at the moment.

More likely than not we'll see another dip under $6k, and people panic selling, making the prices go to anywhere between $3-5k as it bottoms.

But I do think that this is the time to start buying. We're very close to the bottom of the bear market here, and you'd be a fool to not start gradually accumulating while prices are so low and take advantage.

I don't know about your reason for bitcoin dropping to $4500-5000, since I simply have no idea whether or not the seasonal changes in BTC is really something that is tangible or not. It's hard to say at this point.

You also mentioned the fact that we may see a small bull run in July/August, which is possible, but isn't guaranteed. But even if that does happen, it's not going to influence the overall market trend too much, as the sentiment is going to stay bearish and the pump itself will be undoubtedly short-lived.

But yes, I think that bitcoin will bottom out at levels between $4k-5k. When that happens, I have no idea, but since the $6.7k support was broken I think we're definitely going to be consolidating lower before the recovery.

Dunno about Coinex, since I have never used it personally. Exchange withdrawal fees are usually pretty high and those rates that you listed are pretty low in comparison, but there is still no point to storing BTC with them. Just use a desktop wallet instead, you may even get better transaction fees that way.

For me, shapeshift is probably the best option when it comes to exchanging low amounts. They lowered the BTC withdrawal fees drastically to 0.00015 BTC, which is more than sufficient considering that Binance charges 0.0005. Bit-Z is also an exchange that seems to have pretty good rates, but again, don't use it as a wallet, it's not safe.

You got to take into account the trustworthiness of the individual exchange, however. No good having even 0 withdrawal fees if your funds are going to be stuck forever.

Where'd you get the data which shows that 80% of coins dumped at the moment are from long term holders?

I think that it's likely we'll go down further from this point, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. This is how a bear market usually runs, the prices drop by around 80-85% from the peak, stabilises and consolidates, before making a recovery.

So although I do think that we're in a huge bear market atm and it's not going to subside until next year at least, there is no reason to be concerned. Bitcoin's long term adoption and development shouldn't be affected by this.

They take advantage of the people who don't know what arbitrage is, and try to sell it as something new that is able to make you rich instantly just by investing in them.

The promise of guaranteed returns is going to lure a lot of investors in as a result, but it's also the primary tell-tale sign of all of these scams. Even if they do pay investors fat the start, they are still a ponzi scheme with a ponzi structure due to the fact that they claim such exuberant amounts of returns.

Team is obviously faked as exposed by coolcryptovator (kudos to him), and misleading advertising as regards to their partners.

Don't be greedy and don't invest in these claims of guaranteed high level profits, and you'll do much better off.

Bitcoin has a lot more advantages if you're talking about global loans.

You're able to make substantial savings on time, making instant global loans something that can be achieved (I don't know if the online bank that is mentioned here is doing that, however) since bitcoin is instant, and a huge advantage compared to the slow money transfer process that happens with the traditional banks. You're also saving on fees for exchanging forex as a business.

However, if it's just locally within Germany or any other country, I doubt that there would be that much of a niche market that has a demand for bitcoin payments to make it work. As I said, I am not sure exactly what the business model is for this particular bank, but there are definitely many scenarios where bitcoin can be useful to fund global loans.

6 months? That's a long time.

If you have the right details on your transfer and you are sure of that, then there is virtually no reason for such a long delay. But cex.io's fiat payment processing is definitely not something that you want to trust, as shown by history.

You should be able to get a quick response if you send a message CEX on this forum with a link to this thread, so that they can respond publicly to this issue. But apparently they use a third party payment processor for their fiat transactions, which is causing the delays (doesn't excuse them one bit for the delay). BTW, do post some proof in the form of screenshots.

The thing is, you'll never be able to know when things are settled. No way in hell will anyone be able to accurately predict when the prices will hit absolute rock bottom. Plus, selling at this point in time seems quite futile, as you're not likely to get much lower prices anyways.

A better decision if you want to cash out would have been to cash out as bitcoin was having its rally up towards $10k or so. The bear market was already established, yet some people still thought that this was the turning point towards another bull market.

But anyways, I believe that it's starting to become the accumulation stage. Start buying using dollar cost averaging, and hold for the long term. That's the primary strategy imo.

Thank you for the heads up.

These more complex scams can really get newbies. This has already been done on the forum, with a well known scammer (can't remember his name) posting a honeypot private key and told people to send coins to the address as transaction fees in order to withdraw tokens within it.

Obviously, this is never going to work. The scammer has everything planned out and whatever you send to the address is lost.


I don't think OP tried to steal anything. he said he did his research and found that it's a scam.

This is what everyone has to deal with when it comes to bitcoin sportsbetting sites now.

If you look deep enough in their terms and conditions you'll probably find a clause that says that if they suspect any suspicious behavior, then reserve the right to ask for further verification and hold your funds in the meanwhile. Even if you did do KYC before already.

That's why I never like to bet too much money on these sportsbooks, it's too risky. And the verification process is so slow. As others mentioned, most of these sportsbooks are quite shady in nature in the first place.