like always people are making this bigger than it deserves to be. what Bill Gates said was more like a random thought among a lot of other things and like always the news loves these things and only highlights them out of context and then everyone starts repeating them.

and to be fair you should never buy bitcoin based on these things. you either understand bitcoin and see its potential and then buy or you don't see it and you should stay away from bitcoin let those who see the potential enjoy being the "new wealthy elite" because they took the leap of faith and became early adopters.

is the word "coffee" the only thing that you got from that news?

it is yet another country that recognized bitcoin as a currency. that is the important part of the news  which you apparently missed! not to mention that bitcoin fees have always been very low except a couple of months...

so far every single "so called experts" that I have seen calling bitcoin a bubble and at the same time warn people to stay away, did not have any valid reason for saying it. they simply called bitcoin a bubble just because price was higher than they had in mind. and the worst part is that all of them do it because they wanted to buy in, so they are eliminating the competition as much as they can.

the problem is you can never fight FUD. the effort needed to debunk a well crafter FUD is a lot more than people can afford to put in. you will end up spending all your time all day long fighting the FUD and then a new one comes along.
instead I think a better approach is to help people learn that the social media is filled with FUD and they should not take what they read on it for granted with their eyes closed. everyone needs to start learning how to debunk an FUD themselves.

the bitcoin transaction fees are not high at all. in fact they are the lowest possible. I just made a 1 satoshi/byte transaction and another with 0.4 satoshi/byte and they both got confirmed within 2 blocks.

if a third party website like exchanges or gambling sites are charging you a lot then you have to complain to them and ask them to lower that amount because it is low at the moment. for example Freebitco.in currently charges 40 satoshi for a withdrawal!

besides I usually leave my funds on gambling sites, it is not much so I am ok with it and I happily play wit that amount without worrying about fees.

as for altcoins, I usually don't get them out of exchanges so I never gamble with them anyways.

no, people like OP do not see that. all they care about is how much money they can make from bitcoin. and they don't even care what they are trading, it might as well be bricks instead of bitcoin. as long as it goes up and down and they can make money they are happy.

and I am willing to bet that OP has currently been trying to short bitcoin and lost a lot of money, or sold too soon and right after he sold price went up so now he is desperate.
if you check the 1174 pages in this board and 426 pages of speculation you will see at least 10000 throwaway accounts like OP that sign up, spread the same FUD and go away after a while that price goes really high.

tax laws for bitcoin in US has been there for nearly as long as bitcoin was being traded on exchanges and IRS has been hunting down tax evaders for centuries. whoever thought they could evade taxes while using a centralized exchange like Coinbase clearly didn't understand how the laws and the surveillance in their country works!

the public reports say 13,000 but I say Coinbase is and will be handing over every single user's data to IRS without a single doubt.
this has nothing to do with anonymity or anything. they are clearly trading on a centralized exchange with all their personal information already in their hands! and Coinbase or no other exchange out there ever promises to keep it from IRS or any other 3 letter agencies.

that is true.
and it is a strange story at best. because first of all he claims he was selling bitcoin off the market to some random dude using a reversible method which is the most famous method of fraud: credit cards.
the first question is why was he doing this? why not use an exchange like Coinbase/Gdax to sell his coins? was he evading taxes?
the second question is why is he now talking about it? usually when people trade off the market and p2p they don't want any traces be left from them, that is why I think it was tax evasion, in which case why is he now talking about it?!!!

bitcoin has not been on a downtrend ever since 6th of February which is 22 days ago let alone be on a strong downtrend!!! we had the downtrend in the beginning of this year and it lasted a little longer than a week before it came to an end.
now with every passing day that price stays between $9k and $11k it means downtrend is over and we are getting ready for the next phase.

there is a possibility for some sudden drops if some market makers go nuts and wanted to test the waters but other than that there won't be any major drops that OP is looking for.

we can't always get what we want. and there was already a crash, a big one actually. bitcoin lost 70% of its price in that crash, if you wanted to buy you should have bought back then in that dip. now that that dip is over, you can not expect the same thing to happen again.

I mean you can wait and risk missing the chance to buy now or you can buy now and risk missing the chance to buy if a drop happened but if you ask me the chance of another drop is so low that it is not wroth waiting for.

in the end it depends on the type of referrals you have and what you did to get them. most people advertise their links as a way to "make money" by claiming faucet for example, so you get that type of referrals where they claim faucet a couple of times and go away.
but if you get someone who invests, claims faucet, plays the gambling game,... then you make real commissions. and it is true about advertising any referral link. you have to find the correct audience and find the best person that can give you the most amount of money.

I think now that the bottom (support) was tested and could not be broken, it is time that price starts testing the upper resistance now. and with price currently at $10700 I think that is what we are going to see in the following 48 hours where price reaches the last high it tested before dropping down and see if the market is ready for a breakout or not.

in any case I expect a higher high this time compared to last time which was $11700 because of the trend of higher lows and higher highs. the breakout however, may need breaking of $12500

it is an interesting move from their court to force banks to accept the existence of cryptocurrencies.

I don't think the same thing is going to happen elsewhere too. and I think it is a good thing, this can create a nice little competition among banks. imagine all the investors in cryptocurrencies who have their accounts in different banks and some of these banks don't allow transactions to and from cryptocurrency exchanges, so people simply close their accounts with these banks and move on to the other ones that are friendly and offer the services they want.
it is a competing market everywhere.

it is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
they will eventually get involved with bitcoin too. these days everyone is doing it, so they may even be in the process of Research and Development for finding a way to getting involved, a Goggle Wallet for cryptos is not something that far away in my opinion.
not that I would ever use such a thing because it will be centralized and it defeats the purpose of bitcoin but I think it will be a good addition for popularity of bitcoin.

this is just another proof that bitcoin is working as it should and because of that it is striking fear in the minds of those who think they are going to lose their corrupt control over money. this is why banks like GPMorgan are still attacking bitcoin nonstop.
it is like the denial phase at this point and soon they will enter depression and finally acceptance.

every time there is a drop, everyone on the internet becomes an expert and start giving financial advice. and it is always 90% crap, specially right now that price drop is over and it is mostly in consolidation phase, and I would even say this may be a very big accumulation while whales buy more and more bitcoin in this range be fore a shoot up starts.

just because there is a rise and a drop it doesn't mean it is a pump and dump. it is simply the market fluctuations which is perfectly normal in any market. the size is a little bigger than traditional markets because it is bitcoin, an unregulated and small market.
and since the lows are going higher each time price goes down, you can see a nice uptrend in the background.

the adoption is happening like always. it is the slow rise with more people finding out about bitcoin and starting to buy it and that is ongoing.

what you have in mind is not adoption, it is more like an enthusiastic and sudden surge of investors in the market buying bitcoin like mad men/women feeling left out and causing a bubble to form every now and then.
that will possibly happen next year or as soon as price reaches the ATH (ie $20k).

PoS is the worst way of distributing new coins in my opinion. it may seem good but in fact it is a rich gets richer for doing practically nothing scheme. basically the same Bitmain will have a lot of bitcoin which then they stake and earn a lot of new coins on their massive amount! they can simply sell all their equipment and farms and buy a tiny server instead and turn the rest of the money into bitcoin which they stake.... back to first step again.
and I consider that 100% unfair and will leave bitcoin behind if that happens some day.

no because the whole idea of bitcoin is that you don't rely on a centralized party to print out money for you which then not only you have to put your trust in them but also give up control to them.

bitcoin is designed so you rely on this distributed among peers ledger called blockchain. everything is there and should be there in a decentralized manner, the printing money in bitcoin is the block reward.