Number of Billionaires in 2018:  2,208       Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
Number of Millionaires in 2018: 15 million  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
Number of Bitcoins available in 2018: ~17 million mined so far (note some of these are lost or locked up, so realistic supply is even less).

As you can see, if every Millionaire or Billionaire wanted just one bitcoin, we are already getting very tight on supply.

This does not even take into account the millions of more people who may not be quite millionaires, but still have substantial amount of money in the hundreds of thousands and also might want a whole bitcoin.

It also does not account for the people who want to hold more than 1 Bitcoin. As you can see, the growth potential is still very untapped.

The ban will indeed have a positive impact on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As has been pointed out, the ban mainly is against the ICOs and other shady type of investments, which often end up losing investors money and thus leaving a bad impression.

Bitcoin and most legitimate alts are not in the habit of directly advertising their coins anyway, and you can still promote them using Facebook and other social media so ireally don't see hwo this will be negative except for the brief short-term FUD the headlines about it are causing..

They cause centralization because the companies making them also mine with them in secret before they release them to the public months later.

Even then, they only sell to the public to make room for their new generation of ASICs, that they will again sell to you you some months later after they have in private driven up the difficulty. Rinse and repeat.

At least with GPU's there is a level playing field, as your 10,000 GPUs are of the same generation and hashing capability as a home miner with 10 GPUs, so the only difference is scale not hardware supremacy.

Also, GPUs can be used to mine other coins and algorithms, where with ASICs once the next generation comes along the old versions become pretty much useless.

GPUs can still be used for gaming and other computing purposes, meaning that your $5000 mining rig example will be useful 12 months down the road, where your $2500 ASIC is basically a paperweight.

I am not so sure yet. The market has recovered a little the last two days, but that is no guarantee it won't drop back down for a bit again. In February we bottomed at ~$5900 and it could easily drop there again to double bottom before going up.

I think we need to solidly break above the $12k barrier, which was the most recent high since the Feb low, before declaring the correction over.

Everyone needs a break once in awhile, maybe he is just backing off a bit. Also, when programming you can have a lot of easy stuff and then some more challenging work.

Maybe the flurry of updates in the past was easy feature updates/bug fixes and the like, not that he has been working on it awhile the tasks left might be more challenging, thus requiring more time to program and test.

I wouldn't worry too much about the timing between updates.

This is basically my belief as well. Bitmain has been known to this this exact practice before with their other ASICs, developing and running them months in advance of actually selling them to the public.

Furthermore, the only reason they even publicly sell them is to make room for the next generation of ASICs they are making, so by the time a consumer gets the technology it is already a generation behind.

This would be like Nvidia or AMD mining with the new GPUs for 6 months before releasing them to the public, and for all we know they may be developing plans to do just that.

Sound farfetched? Take a look at this CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/secretive-chinese-bitcoin-mining-company-may-have-made-as-much-money-as-nvidia-last-year.html

You know the executives at Nvidia are going to be looking into what their new competitor is doing and try to take a few page from their playbook. AMD will surely be watching and taking notes as well.

Personally, I cannot wait until the day Facebook is talked about as much on a daily basis as Myspace currently is, meaning close to zero.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, all of the top social media companies are almost opposite to what Bitcoin is supposed to stand for.

Giant centralized corporations directing how people think and feel about key issues, oftentimes without the users even knowing they are being manipulated.

Too much centralized control and thus the current hysteria about the monolith corporations now banning some advertising.

There is no point to getting mad as it only serves to cloud your judgement. Myself I like and support Bitcoin, but I can also see at the same time that there are other interests aligned against it, both for profit and other reasons.

Also, since there is money to be made it would be foolish to think there is no manipulation going on in the markets.

I often suspect a lot of the manipulation (in price) is due to the exchanges themselves. I have a suspicion that if one could hypothetically buy up all the Bitcoin on all the exchanges you would end up with more than the 21 million supply.

This would be quite the trick considering only about 17 million Bitcoin have been mined, and some of that is locked up and/or permanently inaccessible. So in essence I believe some exchanges might be listing more Bitcoin than they could truly sell thus helping to contribute to the massive price manipulations we have been witnessing.

This combined with practices such as some exchanges providing leverage and now the CBOE and CME futures contracts means Bitcoin is just turning into another financial product and getting away from its original vision of a decentralized, limited supply, deflationary currency.

Probably the main reason is its ease of access to many people. With a mobile phone you can download an app and begin trading in no time. Use a ATM or meet someone with local Bitcoins, give them a few bucks and in no time you have Bitcoin loaded up on your wallet.

With gold, properly and the other things you list you have the headaches of getting into it. Sure you may be able to hit up a local coin shop, but then they want big premiums over spot price and even more premium if it is by an well known mint. If you try to go cheap you can get stuck with counterfeit gold, even coins now have seen counterfeits. As for property like real estate, there is a whole host of headache acquiring that and then the ongoing property taxes.

Thinking on this a bit more, you really should consider just investing that $6k into coins directly. It probably will not be too much longer and for that amount you can purchase 1 whole Bitcoin, maybe even more if it drops further.

Considering Bitcoin just seen a high of $20,000, and with either scenario purchasing coins or investing in a rig, you will be looking at 9-18 month investment window, the odds are better a direct investment in coins will outperform mining.

Even if you think your are hedging your investment with mining by reasoning if Bitcoin crashed (all other coins would follow) you could sell your rig, think again as the used market will be flooded with gear, and just like people were willing to pay a premium for gear when it was scarce, you would have sellers out-competing each other by lowering their price just to get out while they can.

Anyway, I have posted this before and it is still true, in that by investing in mining hardware you are obviously expecting the market to continue to rise, at least rise sometime in the future, so if that is the case then buying up some coins while they are low is maybe the better choice.

In either case I would watch the market carefully over the next few days and try to determine where we are headed. Myself, if Bitcoin does hit $6k or below I would definitely consider directly investing that mining rig money into it instead.

That sounds about right, I just downloaded the blockchain on a new install I setup in January and remembering it took about 30 hours to complete.

Anticipating continued blockchain growth, the dedicated PC I build uses a 1 TB SSD, so hopefully I still can get a couple years service out of it before needing to upgrade again.

I can actually see Bitcoin heading lower, as looking from a long-term perspective Bitcoin starting 2017 out with just crossing the $1,000 threshold, which it had not done in 3 years prior, so now even keeping at or above the $2,000 mark would actually be doing quite well. So dropping into the $3,000 - $4,000 range would not necessarily spell gloom and doom long-term and as many feel, would be quite healthy.

I know this sentiment is probably no consolation for those who have recently bough at higher levels, especially $10k+ prices, but keep in mind that even those who may have bought at the high in 2013 were made whole again by having a little patience. It took 3 years from 2013/2014 to return to previous highs, but I believe the market and interest is a lot greater now than it was back then, so worse case I would expect maybe half that amount of time.

This still means you may need to sit on your hands until 2019-2020, but then again you should really only be investing money that you don't immediately need. The same would be true of investing in the stock market, most people do not pluck $20,000 down in the market and expect to cash out $30,000 a month later, but instead look to keep that money invested for a number of years, well now Bitcoin is entering that same cycle.

Yes, I do think it is possible but of course the cash value involved would be much higher now, but the amount of BTC involved might be adequate.

What I mean is, back then a BTC was worth $0.7, so a person playing with $22,000 could control around 31,500 of BTC.

So if someone today, or lets just say a single entity like a corporation or bank, had access to 30,000 BTC or the USD equivalent around $230 million at today's price, they could put about 6k BTC ($46 mil) on 5 major exchanges and probably push the market in whatever direction they wanted.

No offense, but this one made me lol. Sorry to inform you but the days of 100 day ROI, or more accurately Capital Recovery, are long gone. With GPUs still selling at 150% premiums over MSRP, your payback period is likely to be on the order of 500 days.

Also, as far as something that will hold its resale value. the same holds true. It is likely the used GPU market is about to witness the biggest flood of secondhand cards it has ever seen and you will be lucky to sell your card at even half the normal MSRP, meaning likely 1/3 what you paid for it.

People will still mine it and the media reports are over exaggerating the issue. No doubt profits are down, but we are a ways from mining being unprofitable.

As has been pointed out, not everyone has the same costs, so there will be some who can make money while others might need to quit. This is no different than any other industry where to compete you need to trim costs and find more efficiencies in the way you work or run your business.

For Bitcoin mining this might mean shutting down older less efficient hardware or finding lower power costs, but like any business those who stand still will lose out, while those who are proactive and seek out solutions will be ok.

I have seen those reports too in the news recently and think that their estimate of a $8,000 break-even point is a bit high. I would actually like to see their formula, as to what they factor in.

Once thing that is worrisome though is that I know they factor in the cost for the hardware, so if the price falls a lot more, say to the $3,000 - $4,000 range for any length of time, how much more is this going to shift the bulk of mining to Bitmain type companies that do the manufacturing?

Yeah, this is one of those things that sound good but there are still a lot of outstanding questions on how Bitcoin will be treated. If you asked me a year or two ago I would have jumped at the chance, but now after going over my taxes from last years profit I am not so sure.

When you are paid in fiat, at least your are taxed on your income and pretty much done with it. Once you are paid in Bitcoin, then not only are your going to be taxed on your income, based upon the bitcoin value the day(s) you get paid, but now you will also need to account for capital gains or losses depending on when you actually received the bitcoin and selling it for fiat.

I think right now the best thing is just to keep getting paid in fiat and then buy Bitcoin when you want it, as this incurs no additional taxes until you actually do cash out. Whereas being paid directly in Bitcoin you have no choice but to do regular cash-outs to pay your bills.

A recent example of this is the motherboard article detailing the ban Plattsburgh, New York just put in place. While the headlines seem to spell doom and gloom and makes it look like the city is against Bitcoin miners, when your actually take the time to read the article it explains the reasoning.

Plattsburgh has cheap power due to a hydroelectric dam on the St. Lawrence river and residents pay only 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. However, this comes with a catch in that they only have an allotment of 104 megawatts of power per month. This allotment was plenty when just the residents of the city used it, but now bitcoin mines are moving in and causing the city to exceed its allotment. When this happens they need to pay the going rate on the open market and forces everyone, not just the miners to pay extra for the power usage overage.

So I don't know about you, but if a big factory (of any kind) moved in near you and caused your electric bill to go up by $100-$200 a month by no fault of your own, I think you would be pissed too. So this ban, which is actually a temporary moratorium, is a cooling off period in which the community can come together and figure out the best path forward.

Myself i think the ultimate solution would be the miners are free to use the cheap power up to the point of the city exceeding its allotment, but then they should be the ones to pay any costs over this as they are the cause of the excessive usage.

In any event, this is definitely not a case of a city just banning Bitcoin mining outright because they hate it or want to see Bitcoin fail like many fud-sters try to spin these stories.

Regulations based upon a light touch I can agree with as no matter what there will always be scammers and con artists trying to cheat people out of their hard earned income in a completely unregulated environment. Laws and regulations protecting users against these type of activities I can support.

However, creating regulations simply to place obstacles in the way of innovation that compete with the established money interests are quite another thing. The people need to be vigilant in holding their representatives accountable to do their job(s) to protect the people and not some lobbyist interests.

I do not know why this would worry anyone really. If you become rich simply hire a lawyer and/or an accountant to take care of the pesky government affairs such as taxes for you.

Instead, you can be out on the water enjoying your new yacht with some of your new young good looking lady friends.