I wasn't aware of there being any. I thought it was all OTC or P2P.

As above, China has been a plump, engorged, glistening tumour on Bitcoin since minute one. Nothing of worth has come from there. I'm amazed 'bans' still have an effect. The writing has been on the wall for nearly five years now.

They have at least differentiated between BTC and all the ICO shit and the average scammy alt. That still doesn't mean they're going to welcome it.

I don't really understand how you can fail to digest its history by this point. You get a boom. Then you get a bust. You'd better acknowledge that it's going to happen.

You can make easy money provided you arrive at the right time and, rather more importantly, leave at the right time. Very few have the judgement and balls to time it.

My preference would definitely be to put that cycle to bed and settle into something much steadier but it seems we're still a long, long way from it.

Yeah. Aside from when it's bubbling this is pretty much the only game in town. I thought by this point there would be some real world stuff to take up some of the slack but it's the same as ever. It needs to be more than the thing that explodes briefly every few years followed by more years of nothing.

China 'banned' Bitcoin AGAIN? - https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1197807060877901825

I have always maintained that the less China there is the better. Nothing has changed. There aren't even any exchanges there to screw with any more.

Bizarre as it seems, that's the first faintly complimentary thing he's said about Bitcoin in many, many years. It's the first time he managed to utter the word in public in many, many years.

I presume Satoshi boned his mother and dumped her because I can't really think why the CEO of the one of the world's biggest Bitcoin companies dislikes it so much.

There's a lot about Reddit I don't understand, or rather can't be arsed to figure out. Reddit gold is one thing. How does it make your life better? Same goes for this. Just adblock and use the mods out there.

Reddit feels like one of those things that if you proposed it now you'd get your teeth kicked in. It's a genuinely mediocre format but the numbers are certainly there.

The utter saturation of any type of gambling in the UK is one of the shittiest legacies of previous governments. Who care if one of them is questionable? They're all worthless shit.

People will always gamble and that's fine. Still, promoting it like it's just another leisure activity in the volumes they do these days is gross.

More likely that patience will be rewarded with - fuck all.

I expect Bitcoin to still be here in some form in another decade or more. I really, really can't see the average alt being anything more than a forgotten footnote that'll be looked back on and laughed at.

As for Mr. Coinbase, I wonder how much he paid in therapy to summon the courage to write the word 'Bitcoin' for the first time in several years? It must have caused him a great deal of psychic pain so I assume he was surrounded by yogis, healers and was being breast fed while he typed it with shaky fingers.

Note he did add 'for better or worse' as a small out.

I'd love to know why so many of these large crypto companies actively dislike the one thing keeping them afloat. I guess it's because it's bigger than them.

The main opposition party in the upcoming election revealed today they're looking to raise capital gains to 40%. They're a ludicrous bunch of commies so will never win but if they did I think that would be enough to get me to take my business elsewhere.

I don't understand why they didn't rename it as a 'service fee'. Free banking isn't a thing at all in quite a few places.

I have a bit of money in the bank. It's not there for investment purposes. It's there to be spent. I'd shop around if one place implemented this but wouldn't bust a gut doing it.

I hope not. Anything that builds corporate dependence is great for them and crap for us.

In the UK at least long-established retailers have been going bust at a furious rate. If you'd prepaid you'd be just another creditor and a long, long way down the list. Lots of gift card owners discovered this to their cost. A lot of money vapourised.

In most cases 'we are building a decentralised xxxx' means they want your dollars and then they're going to disappear.

Most people don't want decentralisation in most areas of life let alone need it. They want someone to run what they use and whine to when it goes wrong.

When it comes to money there clearly is a case for it as financial abuse happens at every level which is why Bitcoin is still chugging.

For buying pants online or watching kitten videos why on Earth would I give a fuck whether it's centralised or not?

I regard 2020 as a potential indicator, but 2021 is where I would expect to see some action. If there isn't, and expectations are EXTREMELY high, then my main emotion will be curiosity.

I truly don't understand why anyone would use any stable coin for more than a few hours when there are perfectly good real dollars available to them.

Yeah. Right.

I'll believe that when I see any evidence of it. Until then it's a bunch of balls cooked up by tossers on r/bitcoin. There's a slight difference between an entire nation and a few hundred people.

Same goes for these surveys that say 20% of Turks own Bitcoin. What the actual fuck? If you tried to pay 20% of Turks in BTC for their services 19.91% of them would donkey punch you.

We have a blockchain thing as the perfect indicator of usage. No blocks are full. Even the Vatican's usage would fill it if they were using it as a currency, let alone a viable population.

I have no idea what'll happen. I do know that those running the show will do anything to keep it trucking - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin

People have been preaching toast since the 1970s. Still hasn't happened yet.

I think in a recession Bitcoin will be a genuinely hopeless 'safe harbour'.

Most people will run for the exits faster than their little feet can carry them. Of course the true believers won't but they're rather heavily outnumbered.

But I doubt we've seen an end to the financial tricks played to keep the plates spinning. If Bitcoin keeps going for a few more years of relative peace its perception may change and be in a stronger position when it happens.

As for USD dying, we've only been hearing that for the last 4-5 decades yet there it still is.

Um, no. I don't have a bank account for fun. I need it to stay alive by buying stuff like food and that.

I naturally assume any bank is hostile to crypto so don't bother running any crypto money through it. When the time comes to sell some it'll be through an account I don't mind losing if necessary.  

If people in their millions there wanted BTC then it has to come from somewhere. You don't get special Argentinian BTC. That means less for everyone else to buy.

It hasn't happened yet and it may never. We all know perfectly well that when the crypto press shouts 'Fuckhole nation's population goes ALL IN on BTC' it really means another $500 a week or so in Localbitcoins volume.

Erm, how did you end up with that conclusion? Though I think this particular figure is a bit silly I don't disagree with the overall gist.

The crypto market is a piddly weakling at present. There are many, many more vested interests in stocks and forex so it could be argued that those markets are less organic than something that collapses in a few minutes on the basis of raw panic, but either way crypto is still a minnow.

It's kind of unhelpful to compare the present to normal markets, but the same goes for the height of bubbliness too. I'm looking forward to much less boom and bust but am wondering when and if it'll arrive.

A lot of people in this very forum aren't aware of this sub forum. And on r/bitcoin when Casascius coins come up the owners have never, ever heard of it either.

Even then I can see why it would be a turn off to most. I doubt anyone's ever used an escrow for anything before and the average know little owner will be looking for dollars anyway.

Rather than ads why not request an add to this page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins  or even Mike Caldwell's site itself?