a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

its not a pyramid.
because a pyramid has many steps/levels where part of each trade gives funds to EVERYONE ABOVE the bottom trader.
however with bitcoin, its just a 1-on-1 trade, so once bitcoin is sold..its done..  no hierarchy, no syphoning off, no layers..

though bitcoin had purpose from 2010(bitcoin pizza) untill about 2014/2015 (merchant/retail spending) that has pretty much dried up now and not many really use it as a functional monetary currency anymore

now its just an asset currency, held purely for the hope of selling it for profit. many say its more like a ponzi, in which a ponzi is basically a asset with no function thats only purpose is to convince a new person to buy it from you for more then you did, knowing eventually that people will lose out when it crashes.

to me its more like a bubble.
houses are a bubble, do people buy them as a place to rest their own head at night or as pure investment such as buy to let/real estate
tulips are a bubble, do people buy them as a cool flower to garden, or as pure investment

when the function/utility desire decreases and the investment gamble/speculation desire increase, people start to notice the bubble
that said. even if the bubbles burst. it may not mean its dead..
flower companies and gardeners still buy tulips even today, and tulip suppliers still make profit even today centuries after the tulip bubble burst
houses still exist and bought today. even after the real state bubble burst
a bubble simply means the inflated air of speculation has popped and a new lower more realistic level of function/utility value comes out of it

with bitcoin the utility desire is nearly gone.. only investment desire is dominating. and at some point even that will wane.
so ill leave you to think about that

as soon as i read "gigabyte blocks" i started laughing at how much hatshpsut93 has been indoctrinated by the reddit propaganda. no where on the face of this planet have gigabyte blocks been an actual proposal

secondly LN is not permissionless..
its like saying anyone can open a bank account. but if you cannot take your money out unless the bank authorises it. its not permissionless
LN is a smart contract with a counterparty that needs to DUAL sign with you.. if a tx does not have both signatures the payment cant be authorised..

the flaw then becomes that you are forced to broadcast a previous ln tx that was countersigned.. but the counterparty can then invoke their CSV revoke code because you transmitted a tx you shouldnt have. in short LN is ripe for blackmailing people by not agreeing on payments and then forcing the other party to lose out

its really worth people reading the code and documentation and not just reading reddits garbage.

LN is not a bitcoin solution.... at best its just a off chain service.. the big issue is devs are not fixing bitcoin. they are crippling bitcoin to try to force/persuade people into thinking this offchain service is the last resort..... sellouts

not true..
spammers are still gonna spam the blockchain.. all LN does is make INNOCENT people have to give up their independent control of their own funds by putting thm into smart contracts(LN)

the devs still have not solved spam nor the fee war.. to them all they care about is being the heads of state in control of the network and taking a cut of the fee's

they actually love the idea of high fee's onchain because it pushes/forces innocent people to use the third party service and pay ln hub fee's.
after all how do you think blockstream ever intend to repay barry silbert and axa those multi million dollar investments.

LN is not a solution and will not reduce congestion.
no on is going to be stupid to lock their entire hoard in a LN contract.. and so when peoples weekly 'deposits' are spent the channels need to close. meaning any merchant/hubs attached to such people that have done multihops will need to close MANY channels so that the balances can balance out. causing a bottleneck if say walmart needed to settle up its thousands of customers

but hey, as i said the devs have not thought beyond their income stream of getting fee's from being hubs to repay BScartel

regulation is meaningless.. it didnt help consumers get saved from the banks in 2007

however consumer protection. in regards to independant review/audits/ critics and escrows are whats needed.. none of this nameless faces making 500 accounts and posting a new ICO each hour

the 'incoming' transaction fee is just their way of paying the fee when you hand funds over to the recipient.
the pretend handing it to recipient is free. but thats because they deducted it when it was deposited.

any site you need to deposit to and then hand to a recipient and then they withdraw usually ends up as 3 transactions onchain.
just sites try to pretend the one in the middle is free by charging you more at the deposit or the withdrawal

its not really the services fault. onchain fee's are high so they have to play these 'deposit fee' games to then fund the 'swap for free' promotions because the swaps are not free if done onchain.

you will also find many exchanges pretend to have zero fee trading.. but then the spread (difference between buy and sell) is greater meaning you didnt technically pay a fee.. but it cost you more because the buy/sell prices are off

its based on the price per byte of information. not the value
.. its jsut what some would say is tough luck you only bought so little btc

if you done another one source to one destination transaction.. whether the value was $6.50 or $6billion.. the fee would be still $6-$7 because
the amount of bytes for the transaction wouldnt be that much different..

but yea i have to agree $6 is steep.
i went around the world a few years ago and developing countries loved the idea of bitcoin because fee's were a fraction of a penny.. but now at $6.. that is like 3 weeks wages for some countries and they wont touch bitcoin with a barge pole

the alts MAY have it.

whats best is assurance..
if your moving coins. unless you have read the code itself. dont automatically think your protected because the forker said so.
bitcoin is about being in control of your own security and funds, not trusting others. so its best to be safe, then risk it on trust


just move your bitcoins to a new paper wallet not to a service that holds the keys. then your bitcoins are independently safe in a new home that no one else can touch..

then feel free to use that old redundant bitcoin paper wallet on the alts knowing it wont harm your bitcoins because your bitcoins are no longer at that old address, thus nothing to move even if they tried to replay the alt tx on the btc network

if you just type your dad bitcoin private key into an alternative wallet..
people can then copy that tx of the altcoin.. into bitcoin whereby. your dad no longer has the bitcoin in his old paper wallet.

exchanges own the privkey of the destination altcoin.
meaning they too own/know the privkey to the bitcoin equivalent address.. as its all the same

so sending a bitcoin gold tx is the same as sending a bitcoin tx. whereby the exchange has both the gold and bitcoin privkeys for the deposit. and so can receive your dads bitcoin even if you only desired to get the altcoin

meaning while you are moving the altcoin. they can immorally move your dads bitcoin if you just push a tx from his old paper wallet key via an alt.

so it is best to move the bitcoin to a fresh address you independently own(new paper wallet) and keep your bitcoin away from the exchange knowing its safe now on a fresh address the exchange cant touch

and then use the old paper wallet privkey to move the altcoins within the exchange

ah, i see that now.. i prefer using bits measure than whole bitcoins.. i hate bitcoins decimals.. plus i was wondering why anyone would only buy $0.65 of bitcoin. it makes sense now. i was just too quick to reply before double checking the decimals

edit for clarity
the 40190 sats is only $6.50

meaning the onchain tx fee to move the 40190sats is 39499sats($6.39).

leaving you with only 691sats($0.11) to have for yourself

this is not locabitcoins fault. this is the fee to use bitcoin.

the reason faucets dont charge you personally $6.39 in fee's is because when they pay out. they pay hundreds of people in one transaction. so a transaction fee of say $6.39 for 100 people, equals indirectly without you realising it only $0.06
this is called batching transactions

the 4019 sats is only $0.65

meaning the onchain tx fee to move the 4019sats is 3328sats($0.54).

leaving you with only 691sats($0.11) to have for yourself

this is not locabitcoins fault. this is the fee to use bitcoin.

the reason faucets dont charge you personally $0.54 is because when they pay out. they pay hundreds of people in one transaction. so a transaction of say $2 for 100 people, equals indirectly without you realising it only $0.02
this is called batching transactions
..
however
when getting funds peer to peer from a single trade that cant batch transactions because its only a single payment from one source to one destination
expect higher fee's
EG you moving 1 lump of funds to 1 address means your paying the full fee

i think of it more like the real estate bubble, than a full outright ponzi scheme. but yea things have changed since 2014, not for the better
and yes even real estate bubble can be seen to some as a ponzi scheme even when a house has a real function

the real estate was a store of wealth........ until 2007/8
and people wont b delighted to sell coffee a new car or a house if accepting that payment is:
higher than fiat
involves using a service that is the same counterparty authorisation control as fiat

many are already asking why buy bitcoin to buy coffee and the retailer just converts it back to fiat.
bitcoin has lost its utility.

now its just like real estate scandal of hanging onto vacant properties purely waiting for the price boom. or like domain squatting hoping someone will buy your domain at a higher price than you bought it for. even it the domain doesnt come with any webstorage/function

.. as for the first part of your post to the other person.
just making a currency that people love is not enough. millions of people love the euro because they can USE IT in many countries without needing to exchange it when going from lets say france to belgium to germany. but this does not mean the euro has toppled america, or africa, or china or australia. because those governments have laws.

its not citizens just using a currency that changes things. its the laws. and governments will not simply rip up legal tender laws

1. you have been reading too much of the reddit propaganda.. with your "gigabyte blocks" falsehood
2. you have not read the technicals of LN and just the promotional material

3. even core devs have now admitted that 8mb blocks was always safe and that 4mb blocks are ultra safe. hense why they are allowing 4mb 'weight'
yet they still refuse real legacy utility of the blockchain for 2mb... think about that..
4. LN is not trustless. and yes you do have to put funds into a new address and yes that new address is no longer permissionless because it needs you AND the counterparty to agree.
5. you need run some rational scenarios in your head about the functionality of LN. but only do this after you have read the technicals.
6. oh and stay away from reddit. its propaganda heaven

the government has laws.
such as taxes needing to be paid in fiat (legal tender)
wages being measured in fiat (minimum wage law)
court, parking, other fines being paid in fiat (legal tender)

its not as simple as just introducing a new currency and the government gives up. after all rationally.. the euro has been around a few decades now and yet americans still use the dollar..
yep thats right. just having a currency that many countries recognise, does not mean governments are toppled
 because the US government dont want the euro as a legal tender in the US even if its a currency that has utility and recognition in many countries.

bitcoin has lost its utility and so people wont adopt it for buying coffee, or sandwiches. and until the devs actually implement a fee formulae again that punishes people for spamming every 10 minutes via high fee's and rewards people who only spend once or twice a day with low fee's.. bitcoin will remain just a speculation real estate/domain squatting scheme.

yes crypto's as a whole has potential as an alternative choice to sit beside fiat, but bitcoin as it stands right now has no chance...
and crypto as a whole and bitcoin will not topple the governments legal tender laws. both crypto and bitcoin will just be a secondary currency to sit alongside fiat, not topple it.
much like deciding to open an EU bank account so you can choose to buy things with Euro around the world while still using dollars in the US

personally i have made mega profit from btc, but to me its the ethos i cared much more about. and here is how i seen it

imagine it like housing
you lived in an apartment complex with an over protective maintenance guy, named the 'gov' who loved coming into your apartment at his leisure under the pretence of fixing the plumbing/electrics as a service he provides as part of you living in his building.
you then hear about this new thing.. its called a detached self contained house. great you move out of the complex and get your own house

now here is the rub. you now realise that there is a toll road at your suberb/block.. $5 everytime you wanna come in or out. you also find out that your plumbing is costly too. the house loses all its utility and desire to use. but you hold onto it anyway purely for its real estate value.

but after a few years although millions of people are holding onto houses that cost a bomb just to enter, and have no utilities, the demand for housing is still there because the real estate values are booming. and people think they can get rich just holding onto empty houses

eventually though. people realise that all the houses are functionally useless and cost more than other living conditions.

in short. bitcoins value is now only speculative real estate boom.. not real living in independent comfort value.

to be hub you need to have connected to many channels.
this means depositing funds into MANY addresses to open such channels and have enough funds to act as a provider(hubs are for rich guys)

also to be a successful hub you need to be listed as part of LN's DNS seed (routing table).

..
that said we both agree its not a replacement for bitcoin. its just a third party service. thus does not actually alleviate bitcoins situation. infact when a hub needs to close its channels, it will be a blanket bomb effect because to ensure the hubs many channels tally onchain. it will ned to close them all simultaneously and with a large enough onchain fee for each of those tx's to ensure block acceptance

think of it this way. at the moment the blocks can only handle around 2500 tx's. which means when its time to close a hubs channels. that hub better not have connections to more than 2500 customers, otherwise there will be a bottleneck.

and yes hubs will need to close channels because funds will need to move. to refill the channels
EG

if A connects to B which connects to C
if A wants to use B as the hub to pay C for a coffe each day

A+B have a channel and both fund it
B+C have a channel and both fund it

so day 1
channel1      |     channel2
A:0.001        |     B:0.001
B:0.001        |     C:0.001

so day 2 - a pays b in channel 1 .. and then B separately uses B's channel2 funds to pay C.. the funds of channel 1 dont physically touch C. its B that does the borrowing for A
channel1       |     channel2
A:0.0009       |     B:0.0009
B:0.0011       |     C:0.0011

so day 10 - a pays b in channel 1 .. and then B separately uses B's channel2 funds to pay C.. the funds of channel 1 dont physically touch C. its B that does the borrowing for A
channel1       |     channel2
A:0.0000       |     B:0.0000
B:0.002         |     C:0.002

A in channel one has nothing left.
B in channel two has nothing left. thus B will need to close channels to settle up

now imagine it if B was paypal with thousands of customers not just 2

stil unsure about the need to close channels.
imagine you had a $30 walmart giftcard.
your wife gives you $10 CASH and says she wants to buy stuff at walmart with your giftcard.
your wife the next week gives you another $10 cash, same again

your wife cannot just keep handing you $10 forever and just use the walmart card. at som point you will have $30 CASH in one hand and a walmart card of $0 balance so you will need to refill the giftcard with the cash. which involves closing and reopening channels

LN is another bitcoin ethos losing scheme.
research multisig/smart contracts
then review LN technically, not optimistically... its an eye opener

then when you actually look at LN you will see that people will need to transfer funds into a co-owned address with a counter party.
which is pretty much like depositing funds into a walmart giftcard to then spend funds at walmart and whereby walmart can then act as your banker if you wanted to spend your walmart funds at any other merchant(with extra fees added for that privilege)

LN is banking 2.0.

other issues are that although its said to be dirt cheap tx fee's inside LN, ALL LN proposals are more infavour of the hubs/counterparties making money out of being hubs/counterparties/service providers by means of charging a fee.

oh and may you not forget to get your funds into a LN channel you need to do a onchain transaction.  and as such it will still cost a lot just to deposit into a LN channel. much like having to pay a few dollars just to use paypal.. yet in the real world paypal are not stupid enough to charge people just to deposit with them

there are many, many other issues with LN. but in short its not the scaling solution.. its a off chain service to avoid the headaches of bitcoin by compromising your funds into no longer permissionless controlled account.

p.s i lost my optimism when blockstream took over the reigns after 2014.. bitcoins ethos has not been the same since then
.. yes i spelled reigns intentionally because the devs think they are the new head of state

bitcoin has many different parts

sha hashes are binary
ECDSA are vectors

quantum computers are not really going to do much harm to binary, because what quantum needs to do is to while calculating outside the realm of binary, it needs to ensure the result and method can be solvable by a binary system. thus limiting quantum's capabilities

however vectors are at risk. quantum computers can solve vector issues much faster
its been suggested that quantum computers can solve a sha only 2x as fast as a binary computer but solve a vector 65536 faster

and with quantum computers only having half a dozen units at a low processing power.. compared to the combined bitcoin network of ASIC power... quantum computers has no chance of bruteforcing sha hashes any time soon

.. but ecdsa has some risks.. given enough time

bitcoin lost that ethos of taking control of money

i too had your mindset when i too started in 2012.

but the politics of a certain dev team and their ambition to intensionally hike the fee's up have priced bitcoin out of the daily us money market. and now bitcoin is just a speculation asset with little to no real world function.

in short it flipped out of the money market and now in the stock market, as a close analogy as you can get.
no one wants to swap shares to buy a coffee. re certifying a share to a new owner costs too much