The best point-by-point introduction for newbies that I've found is the Getting started with Bitcoin tutorial.

One of the most important things to learn is choosing a proper wallet. If it's not listed here, then you should be wary of using it. Web wallets are inherently unsafe -- stay away from them.

Also, the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency space moves a mile a minute. Things are constantly changing. You should keep tabs on current events here:

Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Discussion
Reddit

Welcome and good luck!

For ERC-20 tokens, Etherdelta. I don't even think there is a cost to list tokens. They add new tokens everyday, and every air-dropped token I've seen on the forums has been listed there. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can just copy/paste a token's address into the browser as "#0xxxxx-ETH" and you can start listing asks on the book before a token is officially "listed."

The volume will be lower than other exchanges, once a token gets listed elsewhere. Etherdelta is a decentralized exchange, so it's a bit slow/clunky/confusing for new users. But I prefer it so I don't have to trust exchanges to hold my ETH/tokens.

Didn't Bcash hard fork to make the difficulty retargets less volatile? I don't think it has those drastic drops anymore, which is supposed to prevent those periods of hyperinflation where miners are producing blocks every minute. So, that should mitigate things a bit.

Also, Bitmain (or whoever the spammer is) has been attacking the network with spam for days/weeks already. I guess it'll take priority fees from the current 150k satoshis per byte to.... 500k or 750k? It sucks, but I think people are starting to see through the manipulation by now. And Bitmain doesn't have the "rational miner" excuse regarding Bcash's EDA anymore.


There have always been other SHA-256 coins. If you look at Bcash's hash rate, the vast majority is Bitmain (the lone unknown miner and its proxy, VIAbtc). Bitmain is trying to manipulate people into believing that "miners" are moving to Bcash. But it's just Bitmain.....

I tend to agree. The price rose far too fast, resulting in an Eiffel Tower crash. These kinds of crashes are very difficult to recover from, since so many holders have experienced very severe losses. These bagholders tend to sell into every bounce, further pushing price down.

It's tough to say, though, because there is so much manipulation in the market. My guess is that this bounce is just a "dead cat bounce" and that we will test previous support in the $600s. If there is high volume selling into that level and price bounces hard, then there is a good chance that will be a long term bottom.

Yeah it's decent. Reliable software, and they've always been honorable. Unfortunately, like most BTC-only rooms, the liquidity isn't great. I always leave something in my account there and manage to sit a table or two from time to time. But it's not like most fiat-facing sites where you can sit and grind out 4 or 6+ tables at any time of the day.

Is Micon still affiliated with the site? I never really followed up on the whole arrest thing...

My favorite is Ignition Casino/Bodog/Bovada -- all the same liquidity pool, just different skins depending on jurisdiction. The games are fishier than anywhere else, probably because they don't allow HUDs or similar automated player tracking systems.

I also play on ACR and Intertops when I need more weekend MTTs on my screen.

I really like the idea of BTC-denominated games (vs. depositing BTC and exchanging for dollars). But the sites that offer them just don't have enough players to keep me interested.

Indeed, I played a few rounds and won several hands. On ACR or Ignition, I'd have been in profit. But I actually managed to lose money to the rake here. It's considerably higher than anywhere I've seen. That's going to seriously hurt their ability to attract nitty regulars to fill up the tables.

The days of the poker boom are over.... these guys should make more of an effort to build player liquidity. Do they have a program for prop players? If not, they should consider one. I'm a fan of the software, though. Very slick.

It's tough to say. Is this a "sell the news" event? Some traders were definitely expecting a B2X "dividend" which was trading at ~15% of the price of BTC. That's not happening anymore, so some of those traders are selling because of that. Others were also waiting for the fork to reenter alts, and they can do that now.

It looks to me like the initial selling wave is over, and that we will see some sideways action in BTC. That should result in eventual new highs, but in the meantime, I'm looking at alts. I think there's some relief rallies on the horizon.

First, we're talking about an 8MB block size limit. Segwit's block size increase brought it to 4MB. 2x would bring it to 8MB, which is one of the reasons for all of the contention. That's a pretty massive increase in data propagation for nodes and small miners to take on. I'd expect marginal nodes to shut down from bandwidth costs and marginal miners to shut down (or centralize) from increased orphaning.

Secondly, it wasn't really backed by users or developers. Just some companies in the ecosystem who want more capacity. Meanwhile, most of those companies aren't using Segwit yet.....

Bitfinexed ties together a bunch of irrational ramblings to conclude that Tether is responsible for the rise of BTC price. He points to a character he calls "Spoofy": apparently flashing bids on Bitfinex's order book is responsible for people buying up bitcoins on exchanges all over the world. Who really believes that $500m in circulating USDT can pump the entire Bitcoin market, for the better part of a year?

I'll agree that Tether is very shady. Its future collapse (because it's a secretive, centralized derivative) is almost certain. But that doesn't mean we can blame Tether for the rise of BTC, as Bitfinexed claims.

QuadrigaCX is the most well-known Canadian platform that I am aware of, but even so, it doesn't have the greatest liquidity. But if you are only looking to buy $1,050 worth of BTC, it shouldn't be a problem for you.

Another option is Bitstamp. Along with Coinbase, they are one of the most reputable and licensed exchanges in the world. I've used both and I am comfortable vouching for Bitstamp. The wire fees aren't bad and the order books are pretty thick.

I use GDAX, but I would call it anything but reliable. The API and trading engine tend to drop out during high volatility, so it can be a terrible place to exploit intraday volatility. I've sometimes been locked into losing positions due to their frequent downtimes.


None of the exchanges are without their problems. I'm weary of Bitfinex because of their interaction with securities and lack of licensing, and also because of the still-unexplained "hack" last year. GDAX and Gemini are okay, but liquidity is not ideal and they are both prone to downtime. Kraken is very unreliable and is also an unlicensed MSB.

Bittrex and Poloniex both offer lots of altcoin and USDT markets, but no actual USD markets and both platforms have a high rate of complaints if you look into it. Bitstamp is probably one of the most trusted platforms (along with GDAX and Gemini). I'd rate their trading engine and liquidity as average. Regarding fees, your best bet is GDAX: no fees for maker orders. There are high fees for market orders, though, so don't use them.

Some developers are working on a non-custodial coin splitting service. I've browsed through the Github and there are some names I recognize. The #utxoseparation Slack channel is for high level discussion. You can get more info here:

https://twitter.com/ChainSplit
https://github.com/chainsplit
https://join.slack.com/t/utxosplitter/


I'm tempted to the do the same, but after the Bitfinex "hack" last year I'm weary of keeping more than 5-10% of my coins on an exchange. It doesn't seem worth it. With Changelly seemingly catering to the #NO2X side, I wonder if they'll offer a coin splitting service.

A VPN with IP/DNS leak protection like Private Internet Access should do the trick for Bitfinex. They will definitely be the most liquid market. There's two things to consider with coin split contracts vs. futures contracts: If the fork doesn't happen, B2X futures contracts should drop to zero. I really don't understand how delivery works in that case. So, I'd feel safer trading on Bitfinex using the coin split contracts.

The other thing is that you need to long/short futures contracts. Since delivery will occur after the fork, I don't believe there's any way to withdraw profits until you close your position. You would need to hold until delivery to realize the profits and actually "sell" the B2X.

There are two futures markets listed on Coinmarketcap (HitBTC and Exrates). Not familiar with either, but presumably these are not coin split contracts like what Bitfinex offers.

A lot of people have pointed this out. I'm not sure it's a useful comparison. For one thing, no two market conditions are the same. It's likely that the market was in a very different place (due to lots of variables) when the Bitcoin Cash and Gold forks happened. For example, BIP91 had just saved the ecosystem from a potentially painful chain split and locked in Segwit -- reason to rally. Bitcoin Gold happened right in the middle of a parabolic rise. Are these the same conditions that will exist for Segwit2x in 2+ weeks? I'm not so sure.

The other thing is that both the Cash and Gold forks were treated by everyone as altcoins. Major businesses and miners and considering Segwit2x an "upgrade" with plans to eventually abandon support for the minority hash rate chain. That's a very different animal.

To hear Jeff Garzik tell it, it's obvious that the fork is happening. As it stands, I wouldn't read much into the Metronome project. It's an ERC20 token, so it's not as if there's anything innovative happening there.

Plenty of businesses have come out against it, true, but in all honestly, has anyone ever heard of them? Meanwhile, several of the biggest services in the ecosystem say they will defer to miners.

But indeed, with difficulty rising and Chinese miners largely backing Bitcoin Cash, one has to wonder what the real motive is here. I'm beginning to the think that Bitmain and co. are setting up a situation where both the legacy and 2x chains are slow, barely usable and with high fees.

Jiang Zhuoer, (BTC.Top):

Haipo Yang, (ViaBTC):

If they cause enough disruption when the fork happens, Bitcoin Cash can benefit massively.

Judging by the low volume of the BT1/BT2 market, I'm not sure that's true. I'm sure that diehard supporters of the legacy chain will dump the 2x coins, and I'm sure diehard supporters of the 2x chain will dump legacy coins. And I think there are more of the former than the latter. But that doesn't mean there's enough supply to continually drive the price of B2X down. We don't know that at all.


Well, it doesn't matter whether their users are "supporting" 2x. What matters is their share of network activity, and their custody of user coins. Their users can't verify whether they are using Bitcoin, but currently they are. If they leave the Bitcoin network, that will surely be a big hit to network value per Metcalfe's Law.

I'm trying to come up with a logical explanation for this, and I'm coming up empty. Why would the new management company even bother buying these assets? The user base will have left the exchange and withdrawn all assets. Trading will be dead and one cannot reasonably expect it to return after a complete wind-down.

There is better order matching code (even open-sourced), so they are basically just paying for the database. They're probably better off just buying the leaked Bitcointalk or BTC-E databases, IMO.

You're lucky, because there is no BTG blockchain. It hasn't even launched yet. I don't understand what these exchanges like Bitfinex and Yobit are doing. They are apparently letting people trade IOUs based on the proposed snapshot. But nobody can even verify that this is the snapshot that BTG developers will use, since the code is not entirely public yet.

No one can even be sure that it will launch.... and if it doesn't, these exchanges are going to be in some hot water. In that case, people like you just got some free BTC out of literal thin air (assuming you traded it).

Yep -- you're good to go as far as rejecting 2x. Just remember that if the 2x coins ever have value, and you want to sell them for more bitcoins, you probably want to avoid making any transactions after the fork. Any payments you make (to addresses you don't control) will send out your 2x coins as well. It sounds like you don't care, but just throwing it out there because it seems like the NYA companies are doing their best to pump their hard fork.