I think they do this so that they have something in their portfolio that generates revenue and profit streams, because just holding Bitcoin doesn't yield you anything other than more or less on-paper value.

With how much growth this whole ecosystem can still go through it doesn't surprise me that investors go for what they consider the safest option, and it still allows them to gain that exposure to crypto. Win win I would say.

Are you sure about that? You may not see investments in startups and whatnot, but they are still happening and more money than ever before is involved if you look at it from a year to year perspective.

How do you know the CFTC will approve the Bakkt futures? Bakkt has come up with another launch date for next month, but they yet again don't have an approval in their pocket.

It doesn't seem like there is much that's different this time. If they yet again will have to delay their launch date next month, they'll lose even more credibility. It really starts to become quite an embarrassing situation.

The only positive thing is that the market doesn't seem to care about Bakkt and therefore doesn't react to positive or negative announcements from their side. Bitcoin will go up regardless of Bakkt or an ETF.

It's super flawed. Bitcoin can't be created out of thin air, not even back in the early CPU mining days. It has always required some form of computational effort to mine Bitcoin, and that has only increased today.

Fiat, as long as it doesn't come in paper or coin form, is what can be seen as a true scam by that logic. It literally only takes a few presses on your numeric keypad and a few mouse clicks to digitally print any amount you want.

I'm sure he's well aware of that, he's just playing dumb. His main problem with Bitcoin and even with gold is that these assets don't have a profit and revenue stream, but also don't allow him to earn anything in form of dividends.

What you're referring to is more like how governments work when you owe them whatever amount in tax. They will threaten to throw you in prison or seize all your assets they can get their hands on.

If you contractually set up all terms and rights as bank, there isn't much that can go wrong outside the risks banks already are exposed to. The asset doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

I have seen banks even facilitate the exchange of properties and other goods, so it's not that they haven't dipped their feet into non crypto based loans and whatnot. They know how to cover their risks.

LBC is a platform focused just on Bitcoin and not random shitcoins. Considering that OP is supportive of shitcoins it's safe to say that he isn't part of them at all. The different philosophies don't match.

I can't say whether it is a scam or not, but they started off bad claiming to be a group they with a very high probability aren't. Just be yourself--if the service you're offering is useful people will use it regardless of who you are.

I don't even think it's worth using "we are part of the LBC development team" as selling point, because the majority of the people have no clue who they are and what they have done so far.

Coinbase has been running into problems frequently with ETC deposits after the double spend attack. They either have their own checkpointing system in place for that coin or their nodes aren't completely synced.

You might want to convert your ETC to Bitcoin on another exchange and then send the BTC to Coinbase in order to avoid problems. I don't even know why this trash coin is even listed on an exchange as Coinbase....

BSV nodes are centralized too, they always have been. Craig is what BSV is built around, and this shows with how the supporters of BSV ask others what they do in the BSV camp if they don't like Craig himself.

All these silly BSV supporters are doing is show how centralized and mentally retarded their whole ecosystem is. They support Craig and not necessarily BSV, which means that they will follow him even if he supports something else.

The same applies to Bcash. It's just Roger and Jihan with one main developer being Amaury Sechet. These guys can fork and re-org as many times as they want and whenever they want....

SOV is all that Bitcoin needs to amass the most value in the coming decades. I just don't see Bitcoin or any other existing crypto will ever be a form of cash that's better than fiat currencies as stablecoins.

Money needs to be spent without thinking about what the value today is, and that's where stablecoins shine. You also don't have to think about buying back what you spend when your salary is paid out in form of stablecoins.

As we speak stablecoins are already started to get accepted as payment option by third party crypto payment processors, and I think this will continue to happen and they will exceed all cryptos in payment volume eventually.

They don't have to make it legal. I think in the long run their anti crypto stance will do Bitcoin extremely well because people will have more incentive to go local, and that's where they lose all the control.

You can't scare off people with harsh enough penalties in an attempt to have them stop using it. We have seen how effective anti drug penalties are.... Fighting against something so innocent as crypto will have even less of an effect.

People don't want to miss out on the gains and Bitcoin offers an exceptional store of value feature where wealth is stored outside the banking system. What more can people wish for?

Not so quick. People also believed any price below $6000 last year was impossible, but we have seen how brutal the market can be when it goes against the mass. I'm sure that most of these people panic dumped as result.

$6xxx prices are pretty close with how thin the market is--we have recently wicked below $7000 on Bitstamp, and this was just a single whale dump. What if it wasn't bought up quickly? It just as easily could have triggered many stops.

My personal opinion:

$3xxx prices are extremely unlikely.
$4xxx prices are unlikely.
$5xxx prices within correction range.
$6xxx prices are likely to be seen again.

The awareness is definitely picking up in that field, but that's unfortunately not where most of the demand is coming from. Speculation is still the biggest demand driver within the general crypto market.

The improved technicals and the fact that we're just a year away from the block halving contributed the most in my opinion. I'm not sure if the block halving is priced in already, but I guess we have to let time do its work here.

Litecoin will be an important benchmark when it comes to how relevant block halvings still are because it has already more than doubled in value. 50% less rewards means 100% increase is all you need technically speaking.

There are of course some variables that come into play, but let it be 200% then. Litecoin went from just over $20 to now $140 which is pure madness.

It may sound harsh, but when you're already struggling to make ends meet, it's way less likely to actually replicate what this teenager did because you're way more likely to cash out profits when you're up 50-100%.

People often feel bad about not having found out about Bitcoin earlier, but they don't realize that even if they did, they would cash out right away after what in traditional markets can be seen as an exceptional profit percentage.

You need to be a firm believer in Bitcoin and have a large enough part of your wealth parked in it for at least 5 or so years. If you don't trust yourself and have some technical understanding, you could even time-lock your coins.

No one cares about Bitcoin's energy consumption. It's just used as an excuse by haters to make it look bad. If it isn't the energy consumption, then it's money laundering and financing of terrorism.

If it isn't any of the above then they will find something else to complain about. The real 'problem' for haters is that Bitcoin exists and continues to grow, which is an indication of an imploding financial system.

As said above, renewable energy doesn't mean that it's green energy. It's just a fancy--buzzword type of energy that is falsely being marketed as green energy so that people feel better and go with their company.

It's mind boggling how this con man still thinks people have enough confidence in him to follow his recommendations and whatnot. Anyone using this service and lose coins in the process has no right to complain about it.

It's people like him who put a bad name to crypto. This is his next attempt to avoid becoming broke so he can continue afford to pay his dealer. Sniffing grams of pure coke a day is an expensive addiction...

I don't agree with that. If we go by that logic, we can also say that readers of non crypto financial news outlets are generally less interested in crypto and actually quite skeptical about its functioning.

Most readers of financial news outlets tend to be supportive of gold and consider government issued fiat still to be the main form of money despite not seeing it work out in the long run, which is why they hold gold.

Gold bugs are pretty hardcore when it comes to their support for gold. It's close to impossible at this stage to convince them that Bitcoin is the better alternative in almost every possible way.

It's money worthy so they'll go for it. Bitcoin's speculative nature pretty much is an infinite source of content. If the price goes up, they report it. If the price goes down, they report it. If the price doesn't move, they report it.

The same applies to Tweets, Reddit posts, medium articles, etc. News outlets literally grab anything that can make them a few dollars, which I can't really blame them for. They're businesses.

Overall, I much rather read through realistic predictions (bullish or bearish doesn't matter) than all the crappy perma bulls predicting that the price will break through $100k before this or that unrealistic time frame.

Fear will always play some form of role, whether people want to admit it or not, especially when it comes to larger amounts being leveraged. The crypto market is one of the most brutal markets available. It's no kindergarten.

If you trade spot you at least don't lose your position. If you cash out too early/late you still have the same amount of funds, while if you are over-leveraged, you are likely going to lose it all without a stop to prevent liquidation.

I would say that people are better off paper trading for a week or two to see how things go. Most people will find out that they can't beat the market, which directly should be a singal to not try trading with real money.

Long term speaking, there hasn't been a time where you can say that you missed the chance to make solid profits. It all comes down to buying and having patience with how you can't ever perfectly time the market.

If you dollar cost average your entry points instead of going big in one go, you'll be able to benefit from dumps too, and these lower your average buying price leading to higher future profits.

People need to get over not having bought below $1000 or any other low level. Even if you bought at $6000 before we dumped to $3000 last year you would be in the profit right now. I'm sure many people wish they bought at $6000 now. 

People didn't believe in the price to break the $6000 mark either this year, but it still did. This market doesn't care about anyone's opinion or prediction--the price has always gone up and down when people didn't expect it.

The fact that we have seen a parabolic rise this year is mainly due to how people didn't believe this would be possible and fomo'ed in to not miss out. The same applies to what happened during the 2017 bull run.

In 2018 people prepared themselves for a continuation of the bull run, but that went horribly wrong for them. Most of what these get rich quick people bought in was dumped in panic on the way to the $3000 bottom.

Thinking positive isn't going to help you unfortunately--people were overly positive last year hoping for a bull run to happen, but it didn't happen. Lower lows was what people were subjected to in all of 2018.

The thing with Bitcoin is that it can always go lower or higher than what you think is possible. Bitcoin during bear and bull markets acts so irrational that it is either extremely oversold or overbought.

The multi year bull market might have started already, so with a few more sparks it can definitely surpass the $100k mark in the coming 2-3 years. Betting against Bitcoin is dangerous. Make sure you're long with a fat hodl stack.