That's partly why I don't want do anything right now. I'm guessing since I haven't heard by now that Bitcoin ABC and Electron Cash are malware, that they are safe, but I still don't feel good about it. Does anyone know about the BCC wallet on BTC.com? Is it like blockchain.info, where you control your own private keys? Or is it a web wallet?

In any case, it looks to me like the BCH/BTC is still in a bull flag. So I probably want to wait to sell, anyway. Maybe after the next wave up.

That's at least partly the goal. Jihan Wu and company has been pretty open about it too. I think they invented the word "De-Coreifying" while mass deleting commits from Bitcoin ABC after it was forked from Bitcoin. Part of the selling point here is that Core is being "replaced"; that's been what the r/btc and Bitcoin Unlimited crowd has been clamoring for for years now.


I think some of the forkers may actually have good intentions, but their arguments and solutions are terrible.

Not too broadly, they can't. With Coinbase, the IRS tried to go on a fishing expedition, and the courts sided with customers, allowing them to file John Doe motions against the IRS actions. In response, the IRS is reportedly drastically scaling back the probe of more than a million customer accounts.

Further, this happened on a licensed, US-based exchange. The IRS presumably has less leverage with offshore exchanges. Apparently, after last month, that's where the DOJ et al come in, to take down unlicensed exchanges and seize their money...


This is definitely going to be rolled out in the next year or two. Coinbase and Gemini will be issuing 1099-Bs to customers before you know it. The IRS doesn't want to miss out on this action any longer.

Considering Bitmain's position, they could probably continue this game for some time, though. I don't think many other miners are actually mining BCH at this point.

It's looking more and more like a long game for Bitmain now. The supply is so low on exchanges that they can prop the price and keep profitability up. And they have quite a lot of hash power to manipulate public perceptions with. I think it's just an altcoin (hard forks generally are) but don't underestimate the propensity for public confusion and serious price volatility. For now, BTCUSD doesn't seem to care so much. But let's wait and see.

Metcalfe's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

If the value of the Bitcoin network is increasing based on the increasing number of users on the network, the reverse should also hold true. If BTC users are migrating to BCH, that shrinks the the size and utility of the BTC network.

I've seen some math on the subject; I wish I could remember where I've seen the charts (maybe one of Jimmy Song's posts?) Anyway, the idea is that if a major network split occurred (like 50-50), the damage to the value of the combined networks would be significant, and together, they would be worth far less than the original network. This makes sense, since each network would be far less useful than the original (combined) network.

Can you show any proof of this? The stolen Gox coins were apparently shown flooding into several exchanges including BTC-e in 2012, according to the indictment. All of the "stolen coins" mentioned in the indictment were from back then. Those coins provided supply to the market for years (including before, during, and after the 2013 bubbles). As far as I know, there is nothing to indicate that this has much relevance to the 2015 bottom.


Yeah, he's no longer active here. I have a friend who keeps tabs on the Russian community, waiting for his posts.

He called the top of both the April and November 2013 run-ups. However, he was wrong about the bottom in 2015 (we ended up making another leg down at the time, when he thought the next bull cycle had already begun).

I also can't find the source for this $15,000 claim. I read in the Speculation forum that Cointelegraph was wrong in their interpretation of this call. They probably used Google Translate to translate one of his posts from his VK community and got it wrong.

More importantly, he definitely is calling for $40,000-$110,000 in the next two years...

But it's true that there have been forks where an old BTC wallet can net you some free coins. I remember a couple years ago, there were a bunch of people on the forum buying old addresses. There was a website where you could check CLAM balances of old addresses you controlled, and people were bidding on them (either to dump because people were willing to sell them cheap, or to hold speculatively).

I never paid much attention at the time; I probably should have. I bet I could have gotten some free bitcoins out of it.....

That's what everyone was saying at .07; the price of BCC has more than doubled since then. I think it's a shitcoin, personally, and I think it's a last push for control by entrenched stakeholders like Bitmain, Bitpay and Roger Ver. But I think we all have to admit that both the Bitcoin Cash fork and the proposed Segwit2x fork have far more support than past hard fork attempts.

I'll continue to support BTC, but at the same time, I know these guys have a lot of bitcoin, hash power and the means to market their forks. Most bitcoiners are still confident that no significant split will (or has begun to) occur. I'm not so sure.

Then what is your position on hard forks? Hard forks are synonymous with altcoins, since both are incompatible forks of the original network. So if, in November, Segwit8x moves forward and a majority of hashpower follows that chain, will the market consider it to be an altcoin? Or will they call it "BTC"? I think the reason that the Segwit8x developers named their client "btc1" was exactly to address this situation. If it came down to a real network split they wanted exchanges to refer to Segwit8x as "btc1" and the legacy chain as "btc2"...not a bad advertisement right out of the box!

As for Ethereum, it's been said before. They serve very different purposes. ETH =/= digital gold, so I don't see ETH and BTC as competitors.

Like you say, we can't know anything for certain. In fact, we can only make rough speculations as to what is happening behind the scenes. The CFTC decision may not be relevant--each US federal agency has separate jurisdiction. So the CFTC gave them a slap on the wrist for the way they handled their margin funding (IIRC). But that could be entirely separate from a criminal investigation by the US Attorney's office, the FBI and FINCEN regarding unlicensed money transmission or money laundering, or things like that. It would also be totally separate from SEC investigations into their BFX token distribution and their token markets. These investigations take years to come to fruition.

The thing is, Bitfinex is simply huge. I think they are too big to hide if the US government decides to move against them. The question isn't whether the US government could get their dirty hands on all the money; it's more about getting them blacklisted by an industry that is entering a new era of regulation.

Do you think that's all that will happen? I tend to think there are things going on behind the scenes. The charges in the BTC-e indictment go back to ~2012, and the investigation would have begun after Gox fell in early 2014, if not earlier, given the nature of the charges.

So if we draw a similar parallel to Bitfinex, they've been operating as an unlicensed MSB since ~2013. Fortunately for them, they weren't in operation at the time of the Gox laundering (its predecessor, Bitcoinica, was). If the BFX tokens qualify as unregistered securities, and they very well might, then those charges would stem back to August 2016.

I think blocking fiat payment channels was possibly a first step in a larger game.

You sound just like the classic bitcoin bear, always waiting to short as the price keeps pumping. This was definitely the popular sentiment recently, and it's exactly why I think BCH price has pumped so hard for the last day or so. Like any other altcoin, I'd be very careful shorting BCH until after it has seen significant price increase followed by distribution and stagnation. It could remain bullish for weeks or months before it's worth shorting to me. I don't like to short crypto, anyway. That's what forex and oil are for.

That's what makes this so interesting. If the rumors are true that Bitmain controls a majority of global hash power, we could be in for a real show. Now that we are through the initial turbulence (i.e. BCH is now profitable to mine), they can use hash power through different proxies to give the appearance of rational miners defecting to BCH. It's pretty brilliant when you think about it.

I'm not sure if it's worth the risk of significantly splitting the Bitcoin network (if it turns out both BTC and BCH are viable and vying for the title of "Bitcoin"), but maybe retaining AsicBoost and slowing the proliferation of payment channels is worth it for Bitmain.

I'm only aware of Ashton Kutcher (shilled for BitGo), Mike Tyson (shilled for some Bitcoin ATM) and Floyd Mayweather (who shilled for some ETH token ICO, so not even Bitcoin). Who else was there?

I'm sure that famous folks have got at least a bit of skin in the game by now. They have financial advisors, and the whole financial world is just now starting to take cryptocurrencies seriously. But there aren't many famous people that are openly promoting it.

The US government may not like it, but the cat is out of the bag, and they know it. I think they are trying to exert as much control as possible (like they do in everything else). That means tight regulation, which also means fining and/or shutting down unregulated exchanges. I'm definitely worried for the fate of Bitfinex and Kraken right now. Hopefully the US government will just slap some fines on them and allow them to continue operating. But I suspect more action will be coming against unlicensed exchanges.

As for the banks, BTC won't destroy them. I think they'll start offering bitcoin services (for a fee), and they'll start raking in peoples' bitcoins before you know it.

Yeah, I have no doubt after seeing the recent takedowns that their methods are extremely sophisticated. I definitely underestimated them. A couple things of note here, though. For one, there was a case last year that proved that at least one VPN provider's claims of no logs were true. PIA was subpoenaed about some hoaxer and it came out in public court proceedings that they were unable to provide any information subject to the subpoena except that the traffic originated in the general area of Southern California. So no-log VPNs are still viable for the moment.

And yes, law enforcement runs Tor exit nodes, but they definitely don't run them all. I think the key here is not to be low-hanging fruit. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit for law enforcement to pick off. I'm still not convinced that no-log VPN, TOR and mixing through non-KYC services is not viable for the moment.

The US Marshals Service (US federal agency) had custody over the Silk Road coins and other bitcoins that were taken in various seizures and later auctioned off.

If the US government held bitcoins like gold reserves, I'm not sure which agency would be tasked with holding custody. Which agency handles the gold reserves? The treasury? In fact, where can we find out how much gold the US government is holding? This is public information, right? If the government is holding bitcoins (beyond asset forfeiture-->auctions), you'd think that should be public, too.

How do you think Bitmixer was compromised--packet sniffing, IP logging? It sounds like you think the owner shut the service down and posted those messages after he realized that the site was compromised?

I admit the way that Bitmixer left was very odd. It seems like he was trying to warn past users that their IP addresses and metadata may be at risk due to snooping by the authorities.

If the US government isn't running a mixer service, they will be soon. The Hansa market honeypot makes very clear what direction things are going. Going forward, no centralized services can be trusted--assume any centralized service potentially logging your activities (or at least your metadata) is a honeypot and act accordingly. I'm amazed at the level of funds people put at risk on the darknet markets.