it is still highly overpriced for a coin that is centralized and has billions of coins in circulation.
a more realistic price for it is something half of Dogecoin's price. i say half because Dogecoin is at least a little decentralized which gives it 100 times more value than XRP which is practically a bank coin.

these round numbers like $10000, $1000, ... have always been like a big resistance for bitcoin. it always takes a lot of time to break them and when and if they are broken they never last long. just as we saw with the recent dip below $10k which only lasted 2 hours.

which is why i say $10k is the bottom for bitcoin and going below it, after testing it another time yesterday is impossible now and only if a horrible bad news comes out it can drop lower and in that case it will go much lower and will stay there. but with FUD it won't.

you've got a couple of things a little bit wrong here
* the first bitcoin transaction was not this one. instead it was when Satoshi paid 10 bitcoin to Hall Finney
* this one was the first time bitcoin was used as a currency to purchase something.
* it was 2 pizza not 1
* he did not buy an expensive pizza. he paid $41. saying it was the most expensive is like saying i am paying $1 million dollar for transaction fees because i believe price is going to $1000 million dollar! it is the current price and the fact that it was used as a currency which are important IMO.

it will be both good and bad year for cryptocurrency.

a good year because bitcoin is growing a lot more and it will bring in a lot of money and introduce cryptocurrency to a lot of people which is  the bad part because they come in after seeing bitcoin and the usability of it, specially with Lightning Network, and then end up falling for some altcoin shit advertisement and lose a lot of money.


i call it bullshit... specially based on your history.

bitcoin is decentralized but ethereum is centralized and is pumped by the whales and mostly because of ICOs

bitcoin is a currency but eth is a token for the platform it has.

there is a limited number of bitcoin available and there is a cap.
but there is a huge number of eth available which also doesn't have a cap.
supply and demand rules here.

there were no premines for bitcoin but a large percentage of eth is premined.

i don't even know why you begin to compare these two!

the way i see it is that bitcoin and by extension most of the cryptocurrency market (excluding possibly scammy ICOs) will be regulated by most of the world. meaning something about 80% of the countries will regulate them properly like Japan and many other countries have already done.

and the rest of the 20% may do some weird regulation or even ban them which means in that 20% people will simply use decentralization to go around the ridiculous laws.

currently the mempool is clearing up and the fees are coming down very fast. the suggested low fee is 20 satoshi/byte and the highest is no more than 60-70 satoshi/byte. and if this continues we can see the start of a rise and if the ATH ($20k) is broken there will be a very easy rise ahead.

with Lightning Network which is currently growing (nearly 100 nodes are active with 3 times as many channels) we can expect a lot of positive good news for bitcoin. this year will be the year of lightning speed and low fees. paying for coffee in matter of seconds for no fees.
all of it will lead to another booming adoption and growing price. the rally can be huge.

in other words last year it was 1400% rise and this year it will be the same. reaching $100,000 will be ~600% rise.

as you said, price is inching towards $12k at the moment and despite breaking it, it still can not hold it because there are bears that need to fall into some of the traps before we can start our bull run properly.

with bitcoin you will never know these things. right now it seems like the whales are accumulating but there are still opposing forces and we are not yet out of January.
long term i am expecting bitcoin to start shining in February and put everything behind but the time until then is unclear. probably some side way action.

bad example.
instead imagine cell phone, laptop, computer, ... any new technology and imagine if your government wants to ban them after they came out and there were some demand for it.

meanwhile the rest of the world are enjoying all these technologies, adopted them and have been working with them improving their country and now they are light years ahead of the country that banned cell phones, computers and internet....

is it just me or whenever there is a news about some government banning bitcoin and trading of it (as long as it is real news not FUD) that means the trading volume from that country grows that much bigger?

currently i can see the Indian trading volume coming from exchanges and even localbitcoins-like websites is increasing day by day. the price is even higher there which shows there is a lack of BTC there and excess amount of fiat that wants to go into BTC which is buying it at a higher price!!!

it is always worth mining bitcoin, and will always be that way. why do you think there is this enormous amount of hash power going into bitcoin mining? that is because there are a lot of people currently mining bitcoin from all around the world adding to that hash power. and with increasing price it will continue to be even more profitable for them.

but the problem is electricity cost. if you have an expensive electricity cost then you won't be able to make a profit out of it.

translation:
Visa CEO:
"We are scared shitless of bitcoin ever since we saw it come out and with the mass adoption that happened in 2017 we are seriously worried about the future of our business. we charge a lot to process payments and can only handle 1000-2000 transactions per second, bitcoin soon will be able to process billions of transactions per second completely decentralized and free of  charge and that will put an end to a big chunk of our business.
so we try to delay our inevitable doom best way possible."

only those who don't understand the "game" call it luck.

in fact there is no luck when it comes to investing in something solid. yes you can say it is pure luck when you invest in an ICO or some shitcoin because there is no way these things can logically go up but they do.

but when it comes to bitcoin things are different. you can see the potential even though there are issues that it has to deal with. and in a solid market with lots of "real" demand price won't go lower than certain support lines, which happened to be $10k this time until it is increased to a higher level in next rally.

this is what i said yesterday when price was dropping:

sometimes things aren't really hard to speculate.

i have heard this theory before and i think there was a topic in this board also talking about it and i think it is true

the worst part is that when i say it is true i don't mean necessarily there was some manipulation that caused it (although i think it was) but it could have been simply because of the expectation of this to happen!

when the futures stuff started, everyone were speculating about how price is going to drop like this. if enough people believe it will drop they will make sure to sell before the drop and those who delay a little will sell as soon as seeing their prediction is coming true. it is a mentality thing...

scams happen everywhere, illegal activities, shady people, scum of the earth are everywhere. crypto currency circles are no exclusion. but when they keep happening over and over with these random platforms and random altcoins they turn the whole altcoin scene into a shitshow. which it happens to be true in more than 90% of the cases.

in other words it is not just "events like bitconnect" but the whole scene is flawed and they brought this on themselves when they started promoting any shitcoin that came out.


have you ever heard of the term "pump and dump" if not now you know what it means...

all of these altcoins are good and popular but none of them are good for long term investments worthy of any real attention. i prefer focusing mainly on bitcoin itself and have my investment there.

the altcoins you listed are the most famous pump and dump altcoins which makes them riskier investments but profitable. you can see how they got dumped big time when bitcoin dropped.

it is nice only if you didn't have any investment in any of the altcoins. which is not true for 80% of the investors in altcoins because they are newbies who have been pouring their money into this market to get rich and now they are fucked...

i personally prefer the smaller coins which had some pump coming towards them and had a nice dip regardless of their previously stable price. they have a good potential for a huge pump because with the dip everyone could accumulate more of them and now it is raw for re-entry and pumping that towards moon. at least 500% in 2 days is what i am predicting.

the time to sell altcoins was at least 24 hours ago when the bitcoin price drop began. with every 10% drop in bitcoin, alts have been dropping at least 20%

and after bitcoin finishes up dropping, if it becomes stable altcoins will recover and by that time it is not a bad idea to buy them to benefit from their dead cat baounces.
but if bitcoin, after reaching bottom, reverses and starts having a rise, then you should stay away from alts because they will drop more.


not necessary for small altcoins. this is only true for the big ones which will continue to drop.
the small ones are always going to be easier to pump, and pumpers who have lost money during this massacre have to make the money back and pumping small altocins is the way to do it.

it is among the bigger crashes that bitcoin had experienced in the past but it surely is not the biggest one. the $3000 may seem big at first sight but it is only 20% drop whereas bitcoin had up to 40% drops in the same time-frame.

with that said, i have been placing buy orders above $10,000 and a couple of low-ball-get-lucky orders below it. because i do believe $10k is the bottom. with $13.5k being the real bottom without manipulation and panic sells.

i'll say bitcoin is at the bottom and will not go below $10k and even if it does, it won't last there for long.
i'll also say bitcoin will be worth at least $50,000 by the end of this year and if we get LN adopted at a large scale it can go to $100,000 in this year too.

but in the end i will tell you that you are crazy if you really want to go in big like this. you still can't deny the risk of this investment and when there is a risk you should move with more caution.