This has surfaced for a few months now, and I'm quite surprised that they are considering blockchain to handle such data. Doctor - patient confidentiality is one of my questions regarding this idea of employing the blockchain technology on handling medical records. This can get quite tricky since you might need to employ a few layers of protection before you can access a patient's records, and a simple database could do the trick without having to confuse people working with the data. Let's see how would the engineers change things for the benefit of the people, as I still have doubts on how would this work in real-life scenarios, especially handling healthcare data.

I wouldn't be too optimistic at this moment, and would tread carefully and not get impulse buys. This could be another bull trap setup just like the previous run to $4000 then back to $3200, or this time even worse. Even though the resistance level $3700 was recently broken, I still don't believe that we already have the strength to push forward and settle on to a new range. I could be wrong though as the upward movements seem to not be contested by the bears in any way, and short positions are already removed in some of the exchanges I frequent on.

Whatever pleases the eye, gets some value and love for people, and gold fulfills that. They do not care about the tedious task to obtain it, more so the cost to mine it as long as it gets to their hands. Knowing that it is prized by most people and governments all over the world (and the most coveted precious metal too), surely why would one not want to have a bullion of gold on his/her disposal? But then again, you got to figure out how to move it from point A to point B without being questioned by the authorities and risk getting your life cut short due to the number of people wanting to take it away from you.


Or you can add gold flakes on your paper wallet to make it look snazzy and glitzy 

Not the whole ecosystem of bitcoin needs stablecoins as they only benefit the traders who are looking to hedge their funds while transferring from one exchange to another. Also, it is still debated whether stablecoins really fulfill the promise of being a 1:1 ratio of the assets they are really holding, so it's a bit of a stretch to get your funds back once the unimaginable event of hacks happen. We know who to sue and where to go, but would our money be reimbursed once they tried to Gox people? I think not.

IMO, it does not behave entirely like the stock market but yes, if you entered the market after a huge crash, long-term you will be able to get some good gains as evidenced by the past 'cycles' of the market. I was one of the lucky lads who invested when bitcoin was on its $200 mark and sold when the price rose to $2900. It might not be an enough testimony to use as a basis but then again, the charts are always there to be viewed. Also, given that a lot of financial experts are already shouting for a long, overdue financial crisis, I think it's best to stock on bitcoin as early as one can, as it will surely be the asset wherein people would pour their money to once the inevitable happens.

Tl;dr bitcoin is somewhat special in some ways and does not want to be categorized. Well countries are making their moves to recognize bitcoin as a legal tender, an asset and a recognized currency due to their legislative frameworks and definition for the said system/technology/whatever. It's only a matter of time before countries start to treat bitcoin as traditional assets, legal tender or a currency, making its use subject to existing laws and regulations of the country's jurisdiction.

As for its value and whatnot, it's being treated more of an asset than a currency, given that the practical way to use it in the meantime is an investment, rather than using it to pay for goods. People seek profit from trading bitcoins like stocks and it has been the norm for some 8> years now, and I guess it will continue to be one as long as merchants wouldn't take the risk and accept it on their platforms.

Nah, this will be close to nil knowing that the American government are the ones who are funding and spearheading the initiative on colonizing Mars. Also, you have Elon Musk, an ambitious CEO who is really serious about his plans on getting there safely and landing people there for good, and he might have something on his mind once Mars is colonized (which we never will in the near future), and that could be his own monetary and financial system up there. We don't know, bitcoin would surely be the least of the priorities knowing the hurdles it might face along the way, with connectivity being the largest obstacle engineers should face knowing how far it is from earth.

I'd say no, it will only make the people curious but without any real application for the matter, or without any incentives for the people to use bitcoin no matter how many Superbowl halftime appearance does bitcoin make, it won't make anything better for adoption. Also, who would want to pay for such? They'd need to shell out a big sum of money just have bitcoin on air for a few seconds and after that, nada. I'm in for getting the word out for bitcoin but I think beauty pageant and sports events aren't great media for such.

I'm afraid we're not bottomed yet, albeit the recent signs of life in the support zone of $3100 that I'm seeing on some exchanges. We managed to push it back a little to $3400 today, though I think that in the last 2 weeks of the year, we'll be seeing some slump down to $3000 just like what happens every year. Last week of January would be one of the deciding factors whether we'll be weathering this bear market still or whether Bakkt can change some of the tides for bitcoin and other crypto.

This will not hit it for the masses. The idea of this stupid 'Wallcoin' clearly promotes discrimination and politicians want the public to fund it. Knowing how gullible some Americans are, this might work, but then again what benefit do they get in return? The politician clearly did not think of what he blabbered on the media about his stupid idea. He literally wants to promote regulation for ICOs and clearly wants to do a nonsense ICO himself which is totally contradicting. I guess we're really past the age wherein people really think hard, as this is a fine example of dumbness done right.

Nah, even professional stock traders see some crash looming for the stock markets, so I don't think buying in at high prices on the stock markets is wiser than buying bitcoin now. With years of greens and continuous rises, somehow the prices for stocks should fall, and that is what people are already anticipating come 2020. Also, just because bitcoin's price is in a flop doesn't mean that it is not wise to invest on it. Actually, it's better to invest and hold bitcoin right now knowing that a serious correction already happened, and we all know historically that it follows a new ATH after the said huge crash.

Nah, it's a normal occurrence that people are moving large funds to another address, perhaps because of changing their storage or simply a routine transfer of money towards other addresses. But then again, since the address is constantly adding up funds on to their address, this could be a part of another service's cold storage that we don't know something about, or is yet to convey their identities. At this point we don't know the intentions of whoever owns that address, but one thing's for sure though: they hold a lot of money on a single address and weirdly adding up the similar amount constantly that could ring a bell in the future.

I just hope that they don't dump on us when the time comes.

Every cycle, a huge number of non-believers are flushed away from the market, and this time around, a similar thing happened, causing further drops in bitcoin as was expected. Even then, businesses and people who are genuinely interested are still coming to bitcoin in waves, and are not deterred by the gloomy market conditions. Needless to say, price alone isn't the deciding factor of how good a crypto can be, and if people would choose it or not. In fact, every downturn just opens up an opportunity for people to be a part of the market, hence the growing number of users amid the reds.

2019 would be explosive, but could not be as explosive as 2017 where an ATH occurred.

This issue has been around since Mt. Gox days, and I don't think it will really be addressed too soon no matter how many committees they setup to combat just that. Wash trading really is a nuisance on the market but then again they are somewhat crucial into changing the tides of the market sentiment (not that I support the idea, though.) Even in futures market, ones that are under keen eyes from the government can be plagued by such activities, so I'm not that shocked to learn that crypto exchanges still suffer from such activities.

It comes down to bitcoin having a high price resulting into the tx fees included in a block being a sufficient reward for the miners or a change in a less-aggressive, less power-hungry algorithm. PoW would still be the king for security, but then again you have the escalating problem for energy consumption especially since the difficulty increases over time, so some tweaks on the algorithm would do that could substantially reduce the amount of power needed to mine bitcoins without compromising the 'fairness' and security of the system.

But honestly, the options are too vague at this point, and it's quite hard to think of such problems when there are even bigger problems ahead of us, i.e. if we will still exist by that time.

Ahh, the good old days when I can buy a Carolina Reaper chili sauce from San Francisco with spending only a few bucks using bitcoins. I miss those times when my few bits were buying me nice things, but then again the price has to come down to a certain point where it can be sustainable again, and we all know that $19000 was a bit of extreme and literally oversold for bitcoin. I won't be expecting another ATH for the next year, but I do hope that developments and cool projects continue to rise on the cryptocurrency sphere even if the price continues to stall. There's more to bitcoin and crypto than price alone, and we already witnessed several great projects come to fruition due to their inspiration from the said tech.

To function properly, a monetary organization needs more money so as to ensure that they will deliver what they promise. Seems legit if you'd ask me, and they are proactive on telling people that a financial crisis is looming but still urges countries to print more paper money to support their cause and to help prevent an economic meltdown. An economy is not like a broken house that needs fixing in which you would need to get more money to buy more materials; this is a completely different scenario. Haven't they learned from the past crises that this world has seen? Ohh right, they just want to have that paycheck going, I see.

I was there during the bear market of 2014 - early 2016, until the reversal sometime on Q3 2016 and everything went well after that. During those times, everything feels gloomy and blurry, and the market doesn't have any life left, though it never occurred to me that that will be the end of bitcoin knowing that during that time also, several services are starting to see bitcoin as somewhat valuable (introduction of bitcoin debit cards, Steam accepting bitcoin and a lot of services integrating bitcoin payments, among others.)

For me, as long as there are improvements done on the fundamental side of bitcoin, it isn't the end. I've also come into realization that bear markets are vital to reset an uncontrollable market and to measure whether we can achieve a higher floor compared to a previous run.

I've no objections on whichever way you want to handle things as I, too would be unavailable by those times and clearly won't get paid anyway Most important thing is you enjoy your holidays and spend some time away from this forum.

Anyway though, Joyeux Noël (seems more apt since I'm in the French-Canadian side of Canada) and season's greetings to everyone.

Ahhh yes, the nostalgia of people shouting 'bitcoin is the same as the tulip mania' comes to me from 2014 with their regards. No one can deny it, but no one can prove it either. Different markets and things that saw a massive increase in price may have similarities on how they rose and fell, but bitcoin has been doing its thing for years now, with a seemingly ad infinitum on-off of price cycles. If this was similar to the tulip bubble, bitcoin should have been dead since 2011, but no, big names and businesses are still into bitcoin after all the ups and downs.