I guess he already was a millionaire but he made a good decision in selling his album for bitcoin, and actually keeping the coins. We had a lot of merchants that were accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, like valve, overstock, or even Microsoft for example, but I'm pretty sure they didn't kept the coins. If they kept just a small portion of it, their profit would be huge by now. It's also quite a shame seeing valve removing bitcoin as a payment method from their site, complaining about the high fees and volatility. Not that it's not true, but have they kept the coins, they would have nothing to complain in terms of profit at least.

Looking at bitcoin chart I would say that the market is very tight at the moment, so I expect a break to occur during this weekend. A lot of fuss about the CME futures contract ending tomorrow should also act as a catalyst for that break to occur. So I'm guessing that this weekend will be crucial to determine what trend crypto will follow during February. I hope it will be another bull month, after this correction period. If we confirm the down trend, then I guess that bitcoin reaching $5000 or even less is possible, but I'm still bullish on them, specially because of all the recent news regarding the lightning network. Even if the markets fall, they will quickly recover when the LN gets up and running.

I like the idea but from what I've understood it will work on the ethereum platform. Since they still haven't solved their scalability issues, are you sure your application will be able to support a lot of users buying and selling goods all over the world? You even plan on having a decentralized exchange as well. If you look to ehterdelta they are always lagging, and most people just use them to sell tokens, and not to make real trades, simply because it lacks liquidity and it's slow.

I would also make sure that name is not already taken, because I think the Centra project is also building a shop like that, also called c-bay.

I actually like parlays, and I would say they are the best way to win against the bookies. We can do our research, and we can even get a decent accuracy when it comes to betting, but we will most likely be getting some crappy odds from bookies, because they need to win their % from the bets. I know they arrange their book in order to win whatever the end result is, so this means that the odds they are offering can't be completely fair.

If you make parlays, since you have a multiplier, you can use some games to increase the overall value of your bet and this will allow you to win more money long term (for instance a game @1.6, and you add some games @1.1 or things like that, and this will make your bet @1.6 more profitable). I usually do this, and I cant really complain.

There are reasons to believe that bitcoin would reach that price if it would succeed in it's goal to become a currency used by people worldwide to buy and sell stuff. Also let's not forget that there is a halve happening in 2020, so bitcoin will become even more valuable by then. I'm not so sure about the entire crypto market going to "$60 trillion, or 1/3 of all the money in the world". As bitcoin gets more stable, and gets a real use case, the hype around crypto will also decline, and a lot of bubble coins will disappear. We have thousands of coins and tokens, but I would say that we will end up getting a very small amount of them being functional. I think that if bitcoin manages to become the "universal coin", it's dominance won't be just 33%.

The article is not very clear on how this will be done, but these moves from banks seem to be getting more popular. I do believe a similar news was released in the past, but at that time it was Korean banks that were planning to provide this offer for it's customers. I don't know who would won the private keys. If it was the users, and the bank actually just made a wallet/vault, then I guess it would be ok, but I really doubt this is going to be the case. They are probably just trying to create a service like coinbase or something like that.

I understand why people would like to use banks for security, because this is what they were doing their hole lives. Banks have a lot of problems, but chances of getting your bank account stolen are slim these days, and people like that sense of security. We keep hearing stories of people losing all their coins because they were hacked, etc. We know it's their fault, but when they fear this, and don't trust themselves to keep their coins safe, it's perfect normal that they turn to banks to keep their economies safe.

I mean, let's imagine bitcoin would be used worldwide. It is now the universal currency it was designed to be. You try to keep your own private keys safe, just for yourself. How long it would take for criminals to start kidnapping and torturing people in order to get their private keys and steel their economies. People don't get robed like that now, because their money is protected by banks, so it's perfectly understandable that these type of services will get popular, either offered by banks, or other private companies.

I haven't been gambling for a long time now mainly because I prefer doing some sports betting, and the fees are quite high right now, and I usually don't like keeping high amounts of money in the sites. I usually make a deposit, make a few bets, and then withdraw my coins. When a site allows you to bet without holding an account I even prefer it. Since my bets are quite low, it doesn't pay off to do this anymore. I'm also trying to learn how to trade as well, so I'm not having time to look for bets anymore. I don't really miss gambling right now, and I don't know when I will do it again. I will probably try some land casinos just for fun.

I don't really understand what he is trying to say. How could a bubble last 100 years. If something lasts for that long, how can it be a bubble? On worse case scenario it would be something that was working well and eventually failed. Some companies don't last that long, so is he saying that almost all investments and companies could be considered bubbles? If so, our entire economy is a bubble, and that's probably what he is saying. Either he is saying this or not, he is actually validating bitcoin, in my opinion. We can't really be sure about anything, and from that point of view, anything could be a bubble, but it's still worth the investment.

I never had an issues with them, but I didn't use them for long. I had a few alts listed there and they had a decent price so I used it to sell them. I never tried to make a trade or anything like that. I just deposit the coins, exchanged them to bitcoin and then withdrew them. Everything happened with no delays or any problems. What seems to be your problem? Have you contacted support already?

I agree with you on only betting on sports and matches that you are comfortable with, and have some knowledge about the game and the teams. There is not point in betting in a lot of matches. You better do some solid research and bet on on game or a small number of games in a day.
As for martingale, I do believe it might work in sports betting, if you can really find good odds, otherwise I'm not sure it will work. I don't think it's that easy to win at odds higher than 2, and you will need a large bankroll to use martingale with odds bellow 2. So even just losing 4 or 5 times in a row, you will be making a very large bet, that you shouldn't probably be making. I think in sports betting is all about bankroll management, so that you can keep betting for a long time. By doing this, even if you get unlucky in a few games, you will still come out with profit on the long run.

I think LTC and Doge are great options for gambling. Doge have very small fees, and since it's not very expensive it allows you to wager micro bets if you want to. It's also quite stable normally, so you are never "afraid" of losing value when you are not gambling. I also like LTC, since it's quite fast and the fees are reasonable. It's also a top 10 coin, so it's something I wouldn't mind trying to accumulate during my gambling sessions.

I know bitcoin fees are high, but I still voted for them anyway, even though I would probably not use it do gamble right now. The thing is, it would be strange for me to see a casino without a BTC option. Even though the fees are high, I still think it would be a very nice option for high rollers though.

Hello aTriz, I will rank to Hero member on next Tuesday. How do things normally work with you?
Should I inform you when the change happens, and then you will update the info on the spreadsheet if a spot is available?

I will also change to a segwit address, I just need to update my wallet, I should do it during this weekend and in time for next payment.

I don't really know that coin, just saw their huge gains recently, but it's probably just a pump and dump coin. Does it provide trading signals? You can say it predicted all those coins correctly, but we were on a mega bull market, and all altcoins were getting huge profits, so they could blindly pick coins and they would still show some good results. At least they don't present themselves as bitconnect, and they don't trade for people, and just sends signals.

I like trading, and maybe they could have a good product, but I would only believe in them id they showed good results on a bear market.

What you are saying is a complete nonsense and it shows how little you know about those three coins, and probably crypto in general.
First, as you can probably see now, all the other alts are very correlated to bitcoin. Bitcoin had this dip, and so did all alts. This is true for all alts, but ever more evident with litecoin. Even Charlie Lee claims, that if BTC gets hit, then LTC gets hit harder. To be honest, there is little things LTC can do that BTC can. In fact I don't even remember anything, so you can't say that LTC is more evolved than BTC. The only reason it's faster right now, is because it has less tx on it's network.

You cant really compare ether to BTC as well, since they both serve different purposes. Ethererum is a very nice coin, and it has a lot of potencial but it's not made for payments, and it doesn't aim to be a currency. Ether just wants to serve as a platform for "startups" and investment, so it's not really competing with bitcoin.

As for bitcoin not being an advance coin, just wait for the LN and you will see what it the most secure, private, fast and cheapest coin out there. I would advise you to start buying BTC now, since they are dropping, and you will get them for a decent price.

I guess this have been happening all over the world. I remember reading recent news regarding coinbase and one of it's major banking partners. I doubt they will keep this for long, and are probably just trying to hit more pressure over bitcoin regulation. With moves like this, regulating crypto becomes a priority for all, otherwise the markets will slow down a lot since it would be hard to get more capital into these markets.
I wont say that this doesn't worry me though. If we examine things carefully, we can't really use crypto, and we need to buy it with fiat and exchange it to fiat in order to get value out of it. If banks shut down exchanges accounts, and payment systems that use crypto, like neteller or others like it, it would be hard to buy or sell crypto. I guess we would only be able to do it in person, and that wouldn't be very easy to do.

Of course I don't think they can do this by themselves and for no reason, so if governments allow crypto, then banks can't really shut it down like this.

I would say this is just cheap propaganda for them, and it wont even help bitcoin right now. With this move, they will get promotion on almost every crypto site news without having to pay a thing. Since there is a lot of hype around crypto, I would say they will get a very good exposure worldwide. This could be good for bitcoin if it was real adoption, but it's just in Canada, and bitcoin is not ready to be used for small payments, so for those in Canada that will actually try this, they will have a bad experience with bitcoin, so I didn't enjoyed this move by KFC.

If they really wanted to get serious, and claim support for bitcoin, then they could have done like TorGuard is doing, and would be using a lightning network node. They even offer a refund if the funds are lost, so this is a real experiment, and not some cheap propaganda.

Check this article on cointelegraph.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-networks-pizza-day-first-ever-physical-purchase-on-lightning-network

If KFC did something like this, then it would be good for bitcoin.

Looking for event calendars if of course nice, since people act a lot on news. Actually they act before the event take place, since on crypto everyone seems to be following the rule buy the rumors sell the news. An obvious demonstration of that principle has been seen with a lot of crypto, like in the BTC forks, or the exchange bans, or the futures arriving. The price was always already capitalized on the rumors, and then when the since actually happened, nothing really changed. We can't also forget about inside trading, that is true all over the world, but it's much easier to do on crypto. Recent examples of that, where the bcash being added to coinbase, and now the south korea fud.

So yes, I would say that "trading the news" is a key aspect in crypto trading.

I think it's a mix of both of those things (market manipulation and fud). Although the cryptomarketcap looks huge to the common people, the truth is that those values are quite small, if we compare them to the marketcap of stocks, gold, or any other solid assets. I won't even dare to compare it to fiat marketcap, since crypto want to work as currencies. So yes, they can be easily manipulated. Whales can put walls and lock the price at a certain point. Then they take advantage of the news that could lead the price up or down, and the price ends up moving the way they want. Even if people don't want to go into the fud, and start buying, they price wont go up because of the walls, and since there are a lot of people selling as well because of the news, and there is not clear support, we will see the price go down. This will generate more panic sell, and we have those big dips.

Low liquidity and market manipulation, are in fact the reasons appointed by SEC for not releasing ETFs right now. The crypto markets still need to mature a lot more, before they can deliver what they are promising.

Of course not, please stop the FUD already, we don't need any more of that. I think 2018 will be another great year for bitcoin, simply because the lightning network is almost here. If that works we will see bitcoin being used on stores and mass adoption will be possible. As soon as more adoption occurs, we will have more liquidity, and this will probably open ways for ETFs. As soon as we get ETFs then real institutional investing will be made possible, and we will even get more liquidity, and bitcoin will eventually get more stable and will get closer to being a currency.
Not saying all this will happen in 2018, but things are in motion, so this is not the downfall of bitcoin.

If your are at coinbase then you don't have a lot of options, since they list very few coins. I would suggest you moving to bittrex for example, for some really good trading opportunities. Although I'm not sure they still accept new customers. As for investments, I've heard that stellar should be up for a good run this year, probably overtaking ripple. Bitcoin and Ether are of course good investments as well, but their gains should be smaller than the possible gains for cheap coins like stellar.