It is currently 136.2% more profitable to mine on the original chain.

There is a possibility of chain death spiral/black swan event if and only if more than 90% of miners switch and difficulty reset doesn't happen. Now logically miners are profit driven.

1. Majority of miners would switch if and only if Bitcoin Cash block reward is more than Bitcoin block reward. Currently, $4111/$669, 6/1.

2. If not block reward then Bitcoin Cash difficulty should be 6x lower than that of Bitcoin to be profitable to mine.

3. A good number of miners mining on Bitcoin Cash would rapidly increase the difficulty. This just happened. Bitcoin is more profitable to mine now, logically miners switched.

I guess miners are making a good profit switching from one chain to another. Theoretically the chain death spiral seems possible, but practically I don't see it happening, not anytime soon or in future. For something like that to become possible, Bitcoin Cash should have a value more than that of Bitcoin, short-term pumping alone doesn't give a coin any substantial value, maybe temporary and then the crash.

Apart from Perfect Money these are some of the options if you are looking for non-reversible payment methods when dealing with bitcoin.

1. Bank wire.

2. SEPA transfer.

3. OKPay.

4. Webmoney.

5. Payeer.

6. Western Union/MoneyGram - A money transfer can be stopped but once funds are withdrawn as cash there's little risk

6. Cash in person.

7. Cash in mail.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_methods

ETH News link, https://www.ethnews.com/philippines-central-bank-approves-licenses-for-two-cryptocurrency-exchanges

Earlier the Philippine central bank had released new regulatory guidelines for bitcoin exchanges and now their central bank has given official licenses to two bitcoin exchanges.


These are locally based exchanges having international roots.

Local media had confirmed it, http://www.philstar.com/business/2017/08/19/1730418/bsp-approves-registration-2-bitcoin-exchange-operators

This is good for bitcoin adoption.

I guess Satoshi did knew that bitcoin would become popular, but not sure if he had foreseen the extent of bitcoins popularity. Satoshi chose 21 million as the limit because if bitcoin didn't become popular then the number wasn't too high and if it became popular then it wasn't too low.


https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/54-my-first-message-to-satoshi/

As far why Satoshi created bitcoin:


There were a few centralized virtual currencies before bitcoin, one of them was DigiCash and then the Bit Gold proposal by Nick Szabo, Satoshi might have got influenced from these.

It is not what users want, it is what BitPay wants (NYA).

Apart from BitPay there are other bitcoin payment gateways/ service providers for merchants.

Already two LN wallets have been tested on the bitcoin testnet. Wait for LN to be implemented and PoS's to integrate it.

I guess what users want is microtransactions/transactions at the lowest fee, what merchants want is instant transaction/confirmations, globally what users want is cross border transactions at 1/3 the fee of centralized services. Guess it is possible with LN.

If the alt is BCH, I don't see how pumping alone pushes a no real world usage coin, the recent  surge is just pumping. It would drop below $600 by tomorrow or day after tomorrow. So I don't think alts are taking over.

1. No one who has been into bitcoin for a considerable period of time would voluntarily opt for a split.

2. There might be a split in November or might not be. If it is, it might be the last split, if it is or not the protocol goes on.

Yeah, splitting bitcoin on a regular basis would create a lot of confusion especially for the newbies, btcx, btcy, btcz. There would be only one bitcoin, go for what the market favors, ideology is optional for a beginner, money/profit.

3. That's the problem with newbies, free money, why till btc3, maths goes further than that. Why not a btc100 and go on with your fiat/flawed banking system?

Not a BTC expert, just a bitcoin enthusiast.

American corporation, US government, CIA operative, banks...Would have made some sense if it was a conspiracy within the bitcoin ecosystem

Flippening, BCH gets the better of bitcoin, right, and in two weeks, let's see how a coin with a concept of big blocks with no real user base (pure pumping) and nil merchant adoption gets the better of bitcoin.

Not better, that would be too difficult to break the shackles, let's assume BCH would be priced at anywhere between $650 to $1000 within the two-week period and then I would contemplate on something might catch up with bitcoin in near future.

1. Yeah, some exchanges credited their users with BCH.

2. Don't create addresses on bitaddress, not safe. Yeah, if you created an address and wrote down the private keys then you have both bitcoin and bitcoin cash, assuming you created an address and transferred some funds to it before the split, August 1.

3. Point 1 & 2. If you had bitcoins in your address before the split, then you have the equivalent BCH, private key matters, not exchanges.

4. There is bitcoin and there is BCH or bitcoin cash. You can sell BCH on Kraken, Poloniex, and Bittrex (on Bittrex it is BCC).

Bitcoin on an exchange, not stock exchange.

Would you explain how LN costs $100 to open a channel? Would be enlightening. I guess you got the $100 from this article,

https://medium.com/@AudunGulbrands1/lightning-faq-67bd2b957d70

Or this

https://cryptoinsider.com/quickly-will-bitcoins-lightning-network-able-lower-fees/

Better read the full content rather than picking words that suit your thought process/tip jar.

No one is stopping you from trolling, but troll with a bit of logic, at least your statement would have a bit of logic to argue upon.

Thanks for trolling  

There is no doubt that blockchain is a killer app. Bitcoin is blockchain's killer app. Blockchain technology can be put into use in different fields of life so in future blockchain might have another killer app, maybe from the field of healthcare, insurance, real estate, gaming, data storage/cloud storage, climate change (renewable energy), quite a lot of possibilities.

What is bitcoins killer app? For example, web browsers are the killer app of the Internet, Ethereum's killer app is smart contracts. So in this context, a killer application is something which guarantees that bitcoin would be adopted globally, mainstream adoption.

1. Smart contract is Ethereum's in-built application. Likewise, decentralized currency, store of value/digital gold is bitcoins in-built application. It could be said that being digital gold is bitcoins killer app.

2. Not in-built, an application which would compel people to adopt bitcoin. For example, I think BTCJam (first P2P lending website, connecting lenders and borrowers from over 120 countries) was somewhat a killer app of bitcoin. Similarly Abra can be bitcoins killer app.

So does bitcoin have a killer app which guarantees mainstream adoption?

How is LN a bank? It is open source and anyone can run a lightening node. Yeah, some wallet providers or exchanges would be operating large hubs. Users are using the services provided by these exchanges and wallets and if they also use their payment channels, is there anything wrong in it? No.

PayPal and LN, really, in LN you have to lock up funds temporarily to process off chain transactions, but still you have absolute control over your funds. On chain transactions are necessary to open and close a payment channel.

LN can scale bitcoin to VISA standards. Bitcoin isn't about miners only, spamming, fee manipulation. With LN and other implementations spamming would become expensive and users can choose if they want to make an on chain transaction with a higher fee or off chain transaction at a lower fee. It's as simple as that. LN is an additional layer so if you don't want to use it, you don't have to use it.

LN might cut-short the profitability of miners/mining businesses, but it puts users on a level ground with miners.

Yeah, it's gone forever, lost coins.

If you are saving bitcoins for your loved ones then you should clearly explain to them how bitcoin works and how to inherit coins in case you die.

The simplest form of bitcoin inheritance is writing down the private keys on a piece of paper and storing it in a safety deposit box.

You can use bitcoin protocol for inheritance, but these are a bit technical and complicated, contract/time-locked transaction.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_4%3a_Using_external_state

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock

Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing

Third-party services. Currently Coinbase doesn't allow to add a beneficiary, but through will and testament ownership of Coinbase account can be transferred.

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2321225-how-do-i-gain-access-to-a-deceased-family-member-s-coinbase-account-

I guess in future there would be more bitcoin/crypto/digital inheritance services.

Let's split the transaction tools into physical money and digital money.

1. Almost all countries are moving towards a cashless society. About 95% of transactions are digital. It is possible that in the future governments might gradually phase out cash.

2. It's not about capability, bitcoin is designed to be a global digital payment system, right now it's more about reliability. We can assume that bitcoin would be more stable in the future and would be one of the popular digital transaction tools.

3. Banking system, conventional money, centralized electronic payment systems, would bitcoin be replacing all these. No. Realistically/logically bitcoin wouldn't replace cash/banking system, but it would definitely revolutionize the digital payment system. Not replacing, but coexisting.

Buying all bitcoins to crash/kill bitcoins doesn't make much sense to me. It is quite possible that central banks/governments might sooner or later start acquiring bitcoins to hold as reserve. How would the governments buy all the bitcoins? Would everybody be willing to sell their bitcoins? Simply, no. Let's assume that central banks somehow got hold of 50% bitcoins, by this time the value of bitcoin would skyrocket, would break all the records, each bitcoin would be worth a million.

What purpose does it all serve to the central banks? Nothing. Even if they managed to crash bitcoins price, would they be able to kill it. No. Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea of programmable money. Governments wouldn't simply be able to kill off bitcoin/cryptos. The best thing governments can do is like Japan and Australia legalize bitcoin and incorporate it into their economic system.

Bitcoin has attributes of both a currency and asset, store of value, unit of value, divisibility, durability, fungibility, and verifiability. Because of volatility, right now bitcoin isn't a reliable medium of exchange, but in future as it becomes more stable it would be widely used as a currency.

Bitcoin as an asset, store of value. It is different from traditional asset classes in the sense it is not correlated to other assets. So bitcoin is a new asset class.

If Quantum computers become a threat to bitcoin then quantum resistant new cryptography standards can be incorporated into the bitcoin protocol as a softfork or a hardfork.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin

Quantum Resistant Ledger

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1730273.0

I think the major reason for increase in bitcoins price is, institutional and retail investors are trading in bitcoins, especially in Japan, since bitcoin being legal gives these investors the opportunity to trade in a regulated environment. GMO, Japan's largest forex market had launched a bitcoin exchange couple of months ago, targeting retail investors in their day trading platform to trade in bitcoins.

ICOs definitely boosts bitcoins and ETH price. Filecoin ICO raised $252 million.

Segwit.

US-North Korea tension might be a small factor.

If I am right, MarketWatch had published an article couple of months ago on how bitcoin is complete garbage and this one isn't any different, ignorance at its best. Just compare bitcoin with dot-com bubble and draw the conclusion bitcoin is a bubble. Why because bitcoin/cryptos are used only for money laundering and playing internet poker


I do agree that most of the ICOs are scam, but simply because you lived through the dot-com bubble and paid off your mortgage with it, you can't guess/conclude that bitcoin is a bubble without even trying to understand the concept behind it. The writer is the one who is talking out of his hat.

Just put a clickbait title, add some nonsensical, uninformative content and publish it to get some views. Some of the bitcoin articles published on MarketWatch and Forbes are doing exactly the same, better to avoid them.

IMO the biggest misconception about bitcoin/cryptos is that they have no real value because they aren't backed by anything. A common misconception which is repeatedly being used by some economists and investors to criticize bitcoin.

Bitcoin is backed by software, mathematics, programmable money, real. Bitcoin has the required characteristics of a currency/commodity: Scarcity, durability, portability, fungibility, divisibility, and recognizability. All these attributes defines value.

Sceptics who have this misconception wouldn't find these attributions satisfactory. There is simple logic, if bitcoin has no value then why people are trading in it? Why people are willing to spend thousands of dollars to acquire it?

Bitcoin isn't something out of thin air, it has a strong foundation. A combination of cryptography and economic incentives, cryptoeconomics. As far as people have confidence/trust in bitcoin/cryptos, they have a real value and as adoption increases, as more people trust them, their value would increase.

They used to accept bitcoin payments in an unofficial way by not integrating it into user dashboard, but allowing bitcoin users to upgrade by sending bitcoins to their donation address, https://blockchain.info/address/1Q1nhq1NbxPYAbw1BppwKbCqg58ZqMb9A8

And then the user had to contact the support with transaction hash and amount to get upgraded.

Now alongside credit card and PayPal they have officially added bitcoin as a payment option. This gives bitcoin more exposure. ProtonMail users who don't know about bitcoins will come to know about it.

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/paying-with-bitcoin/