Agreed.  One might think that perhaps many of these people are truly crypto owners, but gamblers who are buying crypto in order to fund their gambling habit.  People who are using crypto to bypass whatever state controls there might be on gambling online, so only being owners for a very short period of time.  (Some perhaps using their crypto holdings to fund a habit).

Many of the crypto owners I have met since 2010 are (at least the ones I met long ago) have a good understanding of math and realize that lotteries, casinos etc are merely a tax on the innumerate.  

Likewise, without some type of true inside information (e.g. game X will be thrown) it is, as you say, throwing their bitcoin away to be on a sports game.  Yes, you may win, but the house always has an edge through the spread, superior knowledge or something else.  (Barring counting cards at casinos and the like where you could have an advantage over the house).

Gambling isn't a "risk" as it might be to use and risk one's time to start a business (crypto or otherwise) where you have a reasonable chance of reward, gambling is a sure loser when you consider everyone in aggregate.  Thus it isn't a "risk" but a sure way to lose if you persist for long periods of time.

No one but a fool wants true Democracy:  Remember that Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for dinner.  And constitutionally protected liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. 

A well armed lamb would be a lamb armed with bitcoin to protect their assets from the authoritarian wolves who waiting to vote themselves the right to take your assets.  Either outright or via inflation.  And a gun to protect one's life.

In a true democracy there is no protection for minority rights since the majority can vote at any time to take those rights away. 

It isn't all that surprising that it is one of the few (only(?) in the US) ways you can purchase bitcoin from your brokerage account.   An ETF or other vehicle with lower costs and less of a spread between the market price and the value of one bitcoin would be more than welcome.

I think you are right.  Particularly with the concept of parallel construction, aka legalized perjury.  The 2013 use of this during the Obama administration was just disgusting.  Even more so when it is based upon NSA spying.

I agree.  The fate of HK has been a slow motion destruction of freedom and liberty.  The people of HK should be aware now that the time has come to be ready to move assets offshore if not done already. 

The UK made a great offer to the citizens of HK with the offer of citizenship.  The US should do something similar.  There are a lot of talented, educated people there who understand the value of liberty and would make great additions to any society.

While the FBI did "track down" the Twitter hackers, given how stupid they were, it didn't seem to require much work to do the tracking.  Which is good - unless you are the hackers.

The people of Hong Kong need it to protect themselves from the authoritarian collectivists in China.  The time to protect assets is before things get really bad and the last two decades have been a series of progressively larger intrusions and restrictions on the people of HK. They need to preserve assets in Bitcoin so they can move it over the border if (when) needed.  Assets will allow people to start over in a more free country when needed.

Patience is key. Over the course of months, who knows.  Over the course the the last decade, well, everyone knows what happened.

Good catch on the 2017 article.

The positive is that the mining pools only have a limited supply to "dump", (and half as much new supply as a year ago) so at some point, that selling pressure will end.  With demand steady or increasing, there is one logical direction.

It would be interesting to see the % of bitcoins that represents - a UTXO with 0.1 BTC shouldn't be weighted the same as one with 50 BTC.

It is also somewhat meaningless if I bought 1 BTC a week ago at $12000 and then moved it to cold storage today, it might show it slightly positive vs reality.

I realize they like to have lots of views and lots effects, but this could've been a few paragraphs of writing or condensed down into a few minutes.  I'm sure they mean well, but for heaven's sake, get to the point.

They need a TLDW at the start.

1. No one should keep coins on an exchange unless one is intending to sell them soon.
2. IIRC I got an email and notice from Coinbase about it prior to that even though I have nothing in the account there.  

People who don't read or pay attention then cry because they didn't take responsibility to read or pay attention.  

Anyone paying attention over the last decade+ should know that if you don't have the keys, all you have is an IOU.

1. How much?  Was it $1000 or $100 or $100,000?  Kind of relevant whether it was something they could earn in a day or a week or a year.
2. "Bitcoin as it offers a much better alternative to saving cash. " - over the long term yes, most likely, but how long until they need it?
3. Who needs a stable coin unless one is trading?  It is like those centralized cryptos that central banks (and others) are creating.  What the !@#$ is the point?  Who needs centralized crypto, just use a database.

Agreed.  Freedom in all walks of life is critical.  The internet was built on it, although it was also built on trust which ended up being problematic for some things - e.g. email spoofing, no initial S on http etc.  In the 1990s (even the late ones) the regulation that smothered projects was oppressive.  It still is.  And the monopolistic power to enforce groupthink from private companies is equally as bad.

(As an aside, unfortunately I think that with the so-called web 3.0 things like Solid, the lack of design level encryption is going to stifle the growth because people will be reluctant to store things on pods in an unencrypted form (not to mention the need for protocol level ability to migrate to a new pod).  )

Re his tweet:
The problem with online gambling pre Tor etc, was the centralized domain name system where domain names could be seized and the owners arrested if used improperly. That is the reason that casino.com and gamble.com were sold in 1997 and to whom they were sold. Dealing with the Clinton administration and the potential illegality of doing anything with them while based in the US or even outside it, was a huge risk that torpedoed the business plans.

Since the "progressives" have tried to exert more control over everything over more than the last century, it inhibits progress. 

There is definitely no evidence of this. However, smart people all over the world are using bitcoin to protect their assets, both for capital flight and asset protection.  The authoritarian collectivists the world over don’t like people having the freedom to control their own lives, let alone the freedom to use their assets as they wish.

I know a guy who lived in China for more than a decade and he just left about 10 days ago. He had a few thousand dollars with him and was very concerned they’d be confiscated.  Bitcoin helps with that issue.  Even more so if you have 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars/euros to protect, let alone millions.

Smart people in the US should own bitcoin for similar reasons if Biden wins and keeps channeling Bernie and his ilk. His philosophy is anti liberty, and downright evil. People need to protect themselves.  The time to buy insurance is to do so before the house is on Fire.

Has this impacted the price?  Who knows. It is just speculation that it has, of course it depends on the volume of people using it to do so. All the various uses and factors are cumulative.

The people of Asia, particularly China, would do well to embrace bitcoin.  These so-called stable coins have few of the benefits of a decentralized system like bitcoin and most of the issues with a fiat currency like the yuan.  A digitized yuan adds nothing of benefit for the people of China, but certainly benefits the Chinese authoritarians.  Anyone who puts their trust in authoritarians of any stripe - socialist, communists, fascist, totalitarian etc - is naive or just plain uninformed.

That is why I specifically said "new supply" - which you highlighted.  :-)  When you decrease the new supply on the market you certainly decrease the amount that miners are able to sell, whether or not they do so immediately or not.  That decreases the overall "supply" that is available to be sold on the market.  

It is critical to note that prices are set at the margin so a small decrease in overall supply due to a decrease in new supply, can have an outsized impact on price.  Particularly if demand stays constant or increases.  Similarly a small increase in demand can have an outsized impact on price when supply is constant or decreasing.  Now with bitcoin, everyone knows that the eventual total number of bitcoins is fixed (barring any overflow bugs), new supply is decreasing, the only question is at what price, if any, person X is willing to sell.

Obviously it is all complex, but miners do often have to sell at least some supply to cover costs.  Going to 900/day from 1800/day becomes significant over time just to pay the bills and they have 900 fewer per day to sell to cover costs -- at current prices 900/per day is around US$10-$11 million per day, or around US$4 billion per year in fewer newly mined coins available.   With demand from GBTC reportedly soaking up a large percentage of newly minted/mined coins back in the spring, cutting that in half seems bound to impact price.  Back in 2012, a decrease from 7200 to 3600/day didn't cost that much if the price was US$5-10, maybe $30000-$40000 per day. 

Nothing is guaranteed, but the past 2 halvings have had a large impact on price.  Increased or constant demand and less "new supply" seem to be a recipe for a higher fiat price. (Speaking of fiat, printing an extra US$5-10 trillion for coronavirus aid should make people aware of the dangers of fiat inflating purchasing power away).

:-)

This is a nice point, it goes to show why distributed services like bitcoin (twister etc) should be preferred.  Instead of someone being able to "hack into Bitcoin Inc" they would need to hack into each individual's account.  Without a centralized point like Twitter, this becomes much harder - presuming no one finds P=NP and/or breaks PKE.

Everything should be handled using on-device encryption and not sent off whatever device is being used without being encrypted. 

One thing that concerns me about things like Solid is that they may be making the same error with regard to http and https (and others) again.  I haven't checked in about 6-9 months, but the pods are not encrypted on the device.

Good point. He did live there...I think in the thread he said he moved to somewhere in the Caribbean after this.  I'd be interested in hearing an update.