Not meant in a negative way, but people like you show how important an increase in the price is. Investing for most people becomes an option only when the price has shown strong signals of a bull run.

I personally would say that trading has become more difficult with how irrational the market has become after the $5000 pump. Technical indicators have been ignored continuously and it doesn't seem to be over yet.

These are the moments where hodlers accumulate the best possible gains. The only tricky part for hodlers is to cash out on time because of how they tend to hodl on to their coins for too long.

With how much hype there was going on, and the fresh money that kept flowing into crypto, $40k wasn't entirely impossible. At peak it would 'only' require the price to double in order to be worth $40k.

Not many people had the chance to buy or sell the peak, which was positive for people buying because they were forced to buy in around the $15k mark, which is still high, but much better than buying at $20k or more.

Don't forget that South Korean exchanges had to deal with a $5000 premium, which has vanished completely the moment the price started to correct. These people are the true bag holders in crypto.

Banks thrive on fees just as much as crypto exchanges do. It's only a matter of time before banks will compete and potentially even gain an upper hand in this market due to the convenience they offer over exchanges.

You no longer have to send your private information to an exchange you don't know, no longer have to wire money to an exchange you don't know, and you know that the bank won't freeze or lose your funds like exchanges do.

The crypto ecosystem is more fragile than the banking system. Institutions will take over this space slowly but surely.

I don't think that people even realize what they are wishing for. They just jump on the anti bank--government bandwagon because they think it's cool to rehash the words of a bunch of crypto maximalists.

Another thing is that they hope the price will go up a lot, but as foolish as people are, they aim at an increase in fiat value, which you only benefit from when you cash out to your bank account. How ironic is that, right?

There is no shortage of fools here. Banks will stay here and can easily adapt to the changed climate by offering crypto related services, where some banks have already started doing so.

It's a pretty big deal in this case because this jump is very likely the confirmation for many people that the bottom is finally in, while before people (understandably) weren't entirely sure.

People being confident that the bottom is in are more likely to buy Bitcoin now, and this might have been fueling the demand. Bitcoin is cool for them when it goes up, but they ignore it when it has gone down a lot.

We see a great buying opportunity when the price tanks, while most retailers want to get out as soon as possible by dumping whatever they have, and regardless of how severe their losses are. 

Japan has become way harsher with its regulations than necessary, which is a good thing on one hand, because we know how too many unregulated shitcoin exchanges only lead to more scams and losses.

On the other hand, it really looks like their partly 'self regulating' system helps the main exchanges in the country to exercise control over what exchanges to approve and what exchanges to reject.

I still find it odd that Binance chose to leave Japan instead of registering itself there. Is Binance too much of a threat and for that reason not granted a registration, or is there something else?

I doubt it's Bitstamp itself coming up with this, but more so a requirement of their banking partners. I also think that this will be replicated by other exchanges in the coming few years.

Banks provide a service to exchanges, which technically means that they too are participating in money laundering and whatnot would criminals use them as a way to deposit or withdraw whatever fiat currency.

We just have to accept that the centralized ecosystem will become more firmly centralized and controlled as time goes by. It shouldn't come as a surprise to people. Crypto is money and easy to move.

Block weight being 4MB doesn't change the fact that the base block size is still 1MB. You can't strip enough data from a transaction to have the block weight increase significantly. Bech32 is pretty much the max of the max right now.

I read somewhere a while ago that Blockstream has a new transaction format that takes up less space than the current formats, but I'm not sure what of that is true, and how realistic it is to have it be implemented in Bitcoin.

We're still waiting for Schnorr to be implemented, and this already may take a year or two from where we are right now.

They can use the compact African banking system for that way more effectively. African leaders also have a high level of preference for precious metals and diamonds, and I'm sure they have plenty of that hidden somewhere.

At the end of the day, these government level individuals have a tremendous impact on what's happening there, so it's more positive for Bitcoin than negative, which I'll settle for.

We have had enough governmental trashing the last couple of years, so it's good to see that Bitcoin is slowly but surely popping up in every corner of the world. The Bitcoin virus will eventually take over the world.

It's just a matter of time before people find Bitcoin useful enough to no longer care about its energy consumption, just like how people don't care anymore about the energy consumption of the banking system and internet/tech giants.

Back in the days there was a similar discussion going on about how the internet would result in an environmental disaster due to how much energy massive datacenters consume at cost of the local economy/environment.

Right now no one even cares about these datacenters anymore, where most of them run on renewable energy, which eventually will be adopted by most Bitcoin mining farms as well. History has shown that things CAN change for the better.

We broke through the $6000 mark effortlessly not long ago, and that while this level should act as massive resistance due to the massive support it offered to Bitcoin last year. If we're due for $10k, we'll reach it without any problems.

It's going to be interesting to see how much room there is left to go up once we have broken through the psychological $10k mark. One would assume that the block halving at $10k is already priced in for the most part.

If we do head up further, then it's purely the result of fomo similar to what we have seen back in 2017. The main difference is that there are more fiat on-ramps than ever before today, so the price might form a bubble again, but one that's much larger.

I'm actually looking forward to a solid correction, and not a wick that gets bought up immediately. If these wicks are the corrections, then we have had quite a few of them already and there isn't much more to expect.

I'm not sure if people are afraid of a correction because they don't want to see the fiat value of their coins go down or that they went full fomo, but it's interesting that the more bullish the trend becomes, the more afraid people get.

I don't see how more merchant adoption will drive the price up on a fundamental basis. I doubt investors even care about it because most of them never had the intention to spend Bitcoin to begin with.

It depends though. With how the fees have increased, small mixing tasks probably cost more than they bring in. Mixers make money off the larger mixing tasks where a small percentage accounts for at least a decent amount.

And even if there was a lot of money to be made, only the existing ones will gobble up probably 90% of the whole market because of how important trust and reputation is. No one is going to trust a freshly started mixer right away.

I'm not sure what's worse, people following governments thinking their laws are what we should follow, or "Bitcoin maximalists" thinking that the ideals or vision of satoshi is law and we should follow that at all times.

People can do as they please. If they want a so called Bitcoin government, then are free to set one up. If people reject the idea of a so called Bitcoin government, they are free to not participate or be part of that government.

Bitcoin stands for freedom. Freedom you have when you control your private keys.

What do you expect people to do? When the price is tanking hard everyone is saying that the price will go up again so there is no need to worry, and when we do finally go up, people suddenly have to stop being optimistic.

It's clear that the current bull run has made the market become super irrational again. CNBC is no longer a counter indicator, the mass being overly bullish isn't either, so just go with the trend and you'll be doing fine.

Maybe that the $10k mark will bring the correction we have been waiting for, but it could just as easily blast right through it. Grab yourself some popcorn and a drink and enjoy looking at bulls slaughtering the bears.

Same. I get why they have tried to market this as luxury item with how some of the more wealthy OGs try to flex with their wealth, but it goes straight past anyone with a smaller wallet size.

Another thing is that I don't like wearing something on my wrist that could potentially indicate that I have a lot of coins. It only increases the risks of becoming a target, which crypto holders more than ever already are.

I'm happy with my Ledger Nano S and it looks pretty cool as well and can easily be hidden somewhere. I saw Charlie Lee's pimped out Ledger and I must say that I would pay a hefty premium for a similar one.

Trading a whole day for 0.001BTC in profit sounds like a waste of time, regardless of how poor or rich someone is. I can't imagine people actually stressing themselves out all day for such a negligible amount.

It means that you have to do two days worth of trading to withdraw funds worth one day of trading. And then you also have to pay a network fee in order to move the funds out of your own wallet. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Your best shot is to convert to Dogecoin and cash these coins out at a fraction of the cost. Real DEX's (Binance DEX isn't a DEX) require network fees too so I'm not sure if that's going to do anything for you here.

Most people who buy Bitcoin don't do that because of the underlying tech. I doubt people even know what blockchain actually means, or what the difference is between centralized and decentralized blockchains.

All they know is that blockchain is a new trend being hyped up left and right, and they read that it will change whole industries. We have a long way to go in order to make people aware of what Bitcoin is before they buy it.

You mean that blockchain tech will always be here if Bitcoin isn't? Maybe so, but without Bitcoin showing why blockchains only matter if used as distributed ledger, the blockchain industry is worth even less than it already is.

Databases are better than private blockchains. Period.

There is a difference between investors and traders. Legacy investors find even tech stocks such as Facebook way to volatile and risky. Legacy traders are the opposite, they absolutely love the volatility that crypto offers.

Instead of using leverage, you can just trade crypto on a 1:1 basis and still enjoy large price swings. If that's not enough, you can even leverage your crypto trades. It's legit a paradise for all types of traders.

The only thing that sucks here is the lack of liquidity. As a large trader you have to keep that in mind, otherwise you'll be losing unnecessarily due to slippage, which is why most of them rightfully stick to Bitcoin trading.

I expected a break to the downside, but had a price target of around $9500 in mind as peak in case of a break to the upside. Good for my hodl stack, a little less for my speculative stack, but it's all good since you can't be right all the time.

I only use 5% of my total hodl stack for speculative purposes so the 'damage' is negligible, and the price can always fall back below the points I sold so nothing is lost yet.

I'm honestly not sure what to expect anymore. $8000 formed way more of a barrier than the ~$6000 level did, and that while it would make sense to have it be one of the toughest levels to break through.