I would be very careful with tether (USDT) because there a lot of rumors that they don't actually hold the same amount of USD in relation to the USDT as they should, since the point of tether is to be a cryptocurrency that is backed by the dollar on a 1:1 ratio. Users are asking for a new audit for several months now and nothing is happening. The last one was on March or May 2017, somewhere around that line, and definitely before the huge increase in tether marketcap. If they aren't really backing USDT with USD in a 1:1, then it's like they have been printing money just like banks, and a lot of the liquidity in the market is fake, because they can't actually print money. To be honest I don't even know if what they are doing is legal, it's hard to imagine that the US government would allow a cryptocurrency to simulate the dollar, without they actually controlling it.

I'm not raising FUD here, I'm just telling what I know right now, and I think you should search for more information before using tether. I really hope they are, and that everything is ok, because a tehter scandal would not be good for crypto.

What I've heard is that the banks are very interested in the technology behind ripple, but don't really have a real use for the token. It's the same as bitcoin, they usually say they like the blockchain but not bitcoin. I don't know how ripple would work only as a technology, maybe it would act as some sort os shares for it's investors, or maybe you would get ripple s you used the system, just like it happens with Monaco or TenX. I think Banks don't want ripple as a currency for sure, and I think it will be the same for stellar for example. The interest is of course appreciated, and the price has been increasing because of that.

They would have no advantages in doing this, so this is just a funny conspiracy theory. Let's assume this is true, and that they are able to take control of all bitcoins? What next? Bitcoin will lose it's value, and since a lot of fiat migrated to crypto marketcap, the world economy would enter in chaos (I'm assuming mass adoption already took place). The claims in the text on how they would take advantage of this situation and show up a global heroes, is to far fetched and makes no sense in my opinion. It was a funny read though. I guess we now have another death sentence for bitcoin, to join all the others.

I think it's quite simple. Bitcoin has the best team of devs working on it, it is already well established and it's not something brand new, or forked from the original coin (because bitcoin is the original coin), and has the biggest growth potencial, because it will be the first coin to scale globally. Of course it's facing problems, and other coins aren't, because bitcoin has the biggest amount of users. If the other coins had the bitcoin status, they would probably be facing the same problems.

Also, bitcoin is opening road for all other coins to prosper, and you can't really see that apparently. Most of the success that other coins are facing, is due to the success bitcoin is having. Crypto is an aggressive market I get it, other coins don't need to show appreciation to bitcoin for clearing barrier after barrier, and allowing them to just keep moving forward without many adversities, but going to the point of thinking that investing in bitcoin is just because of blind loyalty is just silly in my opinion.

Also, you are just focused on profit, and that is probably another reason why bitcoin will probably succeed, and other coins will probably fail. I prefer bitcoin to other coins because of well justified loyalty, not blind loyalty, and in my opinion I think it's important to believe in a project, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I haven't heard any recent news that justify the recent pump in ripple, but I guess that is not really a requirement for coins to have an increase in it's value these days. Crypto is getting awareness, so I guess it's quite normal for us to keep seeing these price increases, although sometimes I do think that some of these pumps are the result of "coin wars". Litecoin has been rising drastically, and I do think that in that case, is was just an increase in awareness. LTC is listed on coinbase, and a lot of users are joining that exchange, so it's normal that a lot of users will invest in LTC as well. On the case of ripple, I think that it was pumped to gain back the terrain it lost to LTC. Having a top position in coinmarketcap is very important, and big grows generate FOMO, so I think some coins get pumped just to get momentum form retail investors, and keep a good rank in coinmarketcap.

Hi, first I would like to congratulate you for your website. The design looks really cool, and that is always important because it shows some effort from your part into this project. I do have some questions though, that I hope you can answer.

First, I see you have plenty of games, prizes, lotteries, all with big payouts or high value. They are mostly time based, so I assume that it's possible that there are no guaranteed winners just like traditional fiat lotteries, is that correct?  Otherwise these prizes might become very expensive, if you had few users participating. If this is true, it would be nice to always know our chances of winning these prizes. I see that on scratchcards, but I don't see that on the other prizes (like smartphones etc).

Also, regarding these prizes, since the users needs to pay for transportation, I think it would be good to know in advance the shipping rates for our countries, and what are the shipping methods available.

Again, congrats on the website design.

I dont think dollar will fade, or any other strong fiat for that matter. Don't forget that bitcoin is becoming an asset right now (like gold), and not a currency. I know it has the potencial to become both, but fiat will never disappear, at least not in such a short run (since you are referring to 2018). Bitcoin first needs to get well established in the financial markets. Futures are up and running, but they are not even at full force, so let's wait for CBOE and NASDAQ to enter the market and see how it goes. If it works well, lets see ETF's coming in, and by this time, bitcoin already "stole" a big share of the gold market.
If, when LN gets deployed, bitcoin volatility is already gone, maybe we can see it becoming a payment method, but until then, we will still price everything in fiat and not BTC.

I would advise you to be careful with Salt. I also did some research about that coin, and I think it's a promising project, but they are trying to enter the lending market, and might get killed by regulation. Also, they still must prove that their lending network is real, because without lenders, there is no project. I'm also considering investing on Salt, but I consider it a high risk investment.

Ethereum looks much safer, and although Litecoin does not stop growing, I think it will only stop when it gets to third place, so I would go for it as well, and I think it's a much better investment than Salt right now. Cardano looks like a nice project as well, and is still very cheap. It probably wont get a huge price, because of it's large supply, but if it gets to $1 or $2, it will still give it's investors a huge profit.

I don't think so. Dag projects like IOTA and Byteball are very promising, and have their own unique system and approach to the scalability issues, but no one really knows how they will work once adoption kicks in, because they don't have that many number of users. Maybe if they got tested with a super computer, to see how the system would really work with a huge number of transactions could help them. But even if they prove to be successful, I don't think they will ever kill blockchain, because blockchain projects, are also working hard in order to sove their issues, and are capable of off-chain solutions, like the lightning network, so maybe both can co-exist.

I completely agree with you on that point, but unfortunately this is something that is happening with all exchanges. Poloniex is facing the same problems when it comes to support quality. I do hope this is temporary, and both of these exchanges seem to be investing in that area, so right now I try to understand because we all know a lot of new users are joining exchanges, so it's probably hard to keep up.

I know this is different, but even CBOE site crashed on the first day of bitcoin futures trading. We are entering mainstream with BTC, so its hard to keep up. I guess that bitcoin is not the only thing with scalability issues.

Those are nice concepts, and I'm inclined to agree with what was said, and I also consider bitcoin might be the type 4 bubble. In my opinion this means that people should invest with caution, and try to understand it before investing in it. The problem with these type 4 bubbles, is just that. People don't understand it completely, because it's hard to know what to make up of an emerging technology, so they can't really price it correctly. Some know it's good, and even thought they can't really price it, they know it has potencial, but there are others that just go for the ride, because of FOMO. This is what might make the bubble pop, all this emotion behind the investment.

I'm not very worried though, because since BTC has some solid fundamentals behind it, even though it could pop, it will most likely recover after that, as soon as all the emotion disappears, and people start getting in it because of it's real value. It might not even pop at all, because as the development of BTC gets more clear, people might start to understand it, and may actually see that it was still under valuated. Either way, I think bitcoin will have a great future.

The problem with these cheap coins is that they are usually very recent and kind of unknown, so you can't really be sure that they will gain a lot of value in the next year. You best choice would be to go for the top 10 or top 15 coins on marketcap, and check for coins that are under $1, but already have a decent marketcap. Ripple is one of them, and you also have stellar and cardano. The problem with these coins, in my opinion, is that they have such a huge supply, that it will be hard to them to reach those huge values. I think that $10 would be to much with those coins, but maybe $3 or $4 would be possible. IOTA surely did it, and from those I've mentioned, my bet would go to Cardano, because I really like their project, and it has a great team behind them.

IOTA realy looks like a nice project to me, but there are plenty of misleading rumors out there that are keeping me from investing in the coin. First we all know about the problem about IOTA's dev team, that decided to create their own hash function, and they were about to create a serious vulnerability in the code, that was stopped in time, because someone outside the dev team, reported the problem and it was fixed.

The dev team actually that this event wasn't a big deal, and that the problem could not be exploited in order to harm IOTA users as everyone reported. Now I've heard some rumors that the allegedly partnerships with Fujitsu and Microsoft might not be true, and these news had a big impact on it's price. It's because of all these little things that I can't invest in IOTA right now. It looks like a good project to me, and I'm keeping an eye on it, but I will wait more time before buying it.

Exchanges are having a hard time to deal with all the users they are getting. I'm not saying this justifies what happened, but I think they are a legit exchange, so your problem should be solved, since it doesn't look like a hack. The problem is that it will probably take a lot of time, like you said, because they just can't handle the huge number of users they have, and their support gets compromised. In the post you linked, everything was solved so I guess that everything will be ok in your case as well.

I'm keeping an eye on this thread, to see how things evolve. Please keep as updated, and good luck.

They had 1% when they bought the coins. More coins have been mined then, so they don't have that anymore, unless they've kept buying.
As for the OP question, I think that if any of those big players sold their coins they would crash the market, because we have a lot of weak bitcoin holders, that would panic if the market started moving down. I don't think there is any reason for those whales to do that, specially the twins, since they want to launch ETFs, so why would they risk crashing the market?

I never had any problems with Poloniex, but I'm not a US citizen, so I don't know how they are doing with NY residents. I do think they are a legit exchange, so I think you will get your tokens back. Exchanges are getting a lot of new users these days, so maybe that's the reason for the delay.
Anyway, as for a good exchange for NY residents, have you considered Coinbase and Gdax (same company, and Gdax is great because you don't need to pay fees to trade with them)?
They seem quite secure for me, and they are from the US, so maybe they deal well with NY citizens. My other suggestion would be bittrex, but i heard they accidentally leaked some data form their KYC verification process. I still think they are a good exchange, but maybe you should see how that develops, so you are sure they don't have security issues.

I'm afraid no one can really answer that question for you. I do think that the price will go down a bit, but simple because it just increased like crazy in the past three days. Most people that bought BTC probably don't even know what the blockchain is. This means that a lot of guys are getting in based on FOMO, so they will be the first to run away if the price drops a little. We will probably have a correction, and since now it's possible to make money by shorting bitcoin, it makes it even more sense for that correction to occur. If this happen, and from a trading point of view, it make sense to sell, in order to buy the dip. Anyway, no one knows what will happen, so you need to wait and see. Take a chance if you want based on what you think is right, and have an exit planed if things go wrong.

That is not a threat to crypto, and I don't think it would change anything. A lot of countries are already doing it, and maybe they thought it would be a way to reduce the hype around crypto, and mitigate all the interest to their controlled currencies. The thing is, that a crypto coin issued by a bank would just be a way to make payments more easy, so it would be an evolution in the technology, and although that might be a good thing, it doesn't solve all the other issues fiat currently has.

The good thing about bitcoin is that it has the potencial to combine a method of payment even easier to use than fiat, with the value of gold (being scarce, and even more decentralized). This is something a crypto issued by a bank can't really do, so they are not competitors. If banks thought that, they were just wrong.

What you are saying makes some sens. Having a futures market, helps to hedge bitcoin in order to keep them from harms safe, but that is still not the best option in my opinion. If they have many sells, they can short bitcoin, in order to keep profits in case the price goes down, but I think that if they actually accept bitcoin as a payment method they won't hold the coins. They will probably accept and sell them right away, as most merchants that already accept BTC do. This way they re not speculating with the price, so they don't really need futures to be safe. What they normally complain is the high fees, the lower transaction speeds and the volatility that makes it hard for users to buy things with BTC. So I guess that what they need in order to accept BTC as a payment method, is the lightning network, and high liquidity that hopefully will lead to low volatility.

I think you are getting the dynamics wrong. Yes, shorting bitcoin might be profitable, but only if the price falls as well. So for Wall Street whales to profit from going short on bitcoin, it means that they need to also get for it's price to fall, and in order to do that, they need to sell BTC. Do they have BTC already? Maybe they do, and maybe that's why we saw the price of BTC increasing like crazy, but maybe that was just legit adoption. So if Wall Street whales don't have BTC, they have no control over it's real price, so they will take huge risks by going short on BTC.

To be honest, I think they already hold some BTC, and they will short and sell BTC at the same time, and they will win from both sides. But the thing is, why stop there? They can then go long on bitcoin, and buy some coins to make the price increase, and again will profit from both sides. I don't think they will destroy crypto. They will do what they do best, they will collect huge profits with crypto, and they have a lot to gain with it's existence.