It's not so much related to the stores, but the ATMs they agreed to run on behalf of the distributor. The stores get a cut and that's really it. I wish they really accepted Bitcoin as payment option, but that's not the case.

It may still happen eventually, but there needs to be an incentive to do so. Buying Bitcoin through these ATMs needs to be cheaper in order to have people spend it later on, because the fees are killing it right now.

At least, it makes Bitcoin more accessible, and that's important too. The more fiat entry points there are, the more money we can expect to enter during the next bull wave, because that's what average joes wait for.

It's keeping a large number of coins off the market, even right now. If you take that away, you take away the demand for these coins, so what's left other than dumping if the holders are in only for the profits?

I don't think that if Bitcoin fails the whole altcoin industry fails. I'm sure that exchanges will do everything they can to have it be replaced by something else to still have crypto remain relevant and profitable enough for their business.

It's all about the money at the end of the day, and we have seen that exchanges have started prioritizing the listing of altcoins because that's what noobs want. It's supply and demand speaking here.

I always found it fascinating how people even at current levels have the balls to short Bitcoin or any other crypto currency. I get it that you can set stop loss targets, but they mostly hover 1-2% above the entry price.

With how volatile the market organically is, your stop loss will very likely be triggered and you end up with no profits, even if the price ends up tanking hard afterwards. That's not trading, but straight gambling in my opinion....

The only thing you are doing is open position after position hoping that you will end up with more winning than losing trades. Technical analysis may give you an edge, but it's still a calculated guess.

I assume that everything will be held in multi-sig wallets so that individual employees won't be able to have control over any funds themselves, especially when it comes to large amounts.

It wouldn't even surprise me if they make use of an external custodian to take care of storage. In all cases, governments and everything related to technology is a bit of a shaky combination.

I have seen myself how certain departments of the government here use windows XP, and that while you don't want them to take care of your information when they use such outdated operating systems.

It would show an amazing buying opportunity, because if we do happen to fall back that low, you can be almost sure that the last persistent noob is out and we can go only up from there.

For others it might be a doomsday scenario, because selling at such levels and see a massive bounce back up not long after will sting badly. Regardless of where the market is going, noobs will always burn themselves.

Overall, most bottoms are brief visits, so don't expect to have days or even hours time to buy it. If you don't buy in when it happens, you are out. Not that it is bad or something, but people are always focused on buying the bottom.

Good change? Not sure what market you are looking at, but the overall sentiment and charts in the Bitcoin market are still bearish. We are literally one, maybe two dumps away from testing $3100 again, don't forget that.

If you take that into consideration, there isn't much to be excited about yet, unless you are happy buying at these levels, which is what applies to me. The longer we hover below $4000 the more bang I get for my buck.

At the end of the day, just like how bull runs don't last endlessly, bear runs don't last endlessly either. It feels shit to see the market like this, but you'll feel even more shit when the price pumps back up and you haven't bought yet.

Silver is poor mans gold. If you can afford to go big on precious metals, it should be gold for sure, and the best thing is that it occupies less space.

The problem with certain gold coins is that you pay a hefty premium over spot value, which isn't a problem if you think it will go up as a whole, but not of much importance for people strictly focusing on safe haven assets.

It's going to be interesting to see what gold ends up going to do from here, because the $1300 mark is quite a powerful resistance level, and it has been for years. If it breaks, expect a mini rally.

Who is we? I'm not waiting for their decision, and I'm sure that most people who aren't blinded by empty hopes already know it will be rejected. Don't make the SEC have any importance, because that's what you are doing here.

The more people believe the SEC and the ETF matter, the more disappointment there will be going through the market whenever they finally reject it. It's time for the SEC to cut the nonsense out and reject it, because more delays make no sense.

Price wise, I expect more of the same. One day people get hyped up because there was a 5-10% increase, while two days later the price tanks back to the levels the pump started at....

It depends. If you dollar cost average it doesn't really matter when you buy. Obviously, people doing so are less incentivized to continue buying during a bull run, but at these *lower* levels you can't really complain.

I rather keep buying smaller chunks of a coin at current levels than waiting for lower levels without buying, because that makes no sense since we don't know where the bottom is or if we have bottomed out already.

Don't forget that when people turn into bears and expect the price to fall down to super low levels (I have seen various predictions of $1200), know that it could turn out to be a great buying opportunity.

I am inclined to think that it may result in the SEC to be less tempted to approve an ETF because it will make Asia as a whole an even bigger player in the crypto industry, which is one of their main concerns and admittedly a big deal.

If we look at how Japan is taxing crypto currencies in the most ridiculous way, this ETF might be a convenient tool for large investors to avoid paying 55% in capital gains. In other words, there is an incentive to buy into this ETF.

What we don't know is whether or not the ETF Japan might be going to approve whenever they are ready, will be backed by Bitcoin or not. In case it isn't, there nothing to be excited about because we don't need more empty products.

That's exactly what made me dislike most of the people calling themselves Bitcoin maximalists or purists. I get it that you prefer Bitcoin over anything else, which is what I do as well, but don't act like a retard. It's pathetic.

Not everything is a shitcoin, and even if most of them are actually shitcoins, they won't go away but become more valuable as time goes by, because Bitcoin increasing simply means the rest of the market increases as well.

People noticed that altcoins provide better returns during bull runs, which is exactly why they park some of their capital in altcoins rather than Bitcoin. Can't blame people for trying to utilize the little capital they have in the best possible manner.

That's always something you don't want to see become reality when you are a customer of their service. Based on what you say it seems that the owner is very desperate when it comes to selling his business, which is another bad sign.

If something is doing all right, you don't pop up everywhere trying to sell your business. In that case you would patiently wait for an interested party with understanding to show up, but in this case the owner might not even care.

Thanks for the heads up.

I think so too, but the thing is that most exchanges are so incompetent, and overestimate their ability to provide a secure and bullet proof platform, that it doesn't surprise me at all that we see so many exchanges get hacked.

The main thing about inside jobs is that the operators of the hacked exchanges have had all the time they needed to think through every move in order to make it not seem like it was an inside job.

Makes me wonder about why Binance didn't want to get itself registered in Japan, but left instead. It's a huge market, and financially it's not a problem either, so it could very well be that they are trying to hide something.

It doesn't matter how the price went down, what matters is that we are where we are. What you describe has nothing to do with the reality, just what you believe would be a reflection of your preferred picture of the market.

Can you point me at a clear sign of manipulation that actually contributed to the massive selloff? Whales unloading bags in a market lacking liquidity always make the price dump harder.

If you have thousands of Bitcoins you want to unload as soon as possible, you have no other option to tank the price with 5-10% depending what exchange you use. That's not manipulation, just someone cashing out.

I actually bought into Ethereum when it was below $100 and didn't understand why people kept dumping it down. It was more than obvious that such fundamental upgrades would pump the price back up.

I think that the herd needs to see the price actually make a move up in order to belief that people start buying, because they always need that confirmation, and I'm afraid that confirmation came at the $160 mark.

I must admit that I expected it to go up further, possibly test the $200 mark, but I was a bit too optimistic I guess....

It's extremely hard to do for people, because how OP makes it look like a potentially lucrative way of dealing with a bear market, it could just as easily backfire and make you badly regret your decision to sell.

I don't see why people constantly look for ways to do something when prices go down. Either do nothing, which you can be sure of that you won't lose anything other than virtual value, or buy the market down whenever you can.

If you time your entry points correctly, buying the market down also means decreasing your overall buying price. In other words, you will be in the profits much sooner when we have finally bottomed out....

It's all speculation. Failing HDDs can still be sent to certain services in an attempt to recover the data. I own a failed HDD myself with a wallet.dat file on it containing a little under 0.1BTC that I can't access right now.

It doesn't mean the coins are lost, just that I can't access them right now. By the time the price has reached levels people can only dream about right now it might be worth to have it sent to a data recovery service.

I looked it up, and the cheapest service told me that it would cost at least €1000 and likely way beyond that depending on how much time they spend working on it. You can imagine that there is no point doing it right now....

I don't mind 2019 to be a conservative year allowing everyone to carefully think about how we aren't just cheering for something that can go up in value a lot, but also something with fundamental importance.

People often discard why Bitcoin exists, which is unfortunately something people care less about as they blindly jump into every shitcoin they think has potential to go up.

Let the price be stuck around current levels for the rest of the year, I'm down for that. Maybe that will drive a large part of the speculators and ICOs so crazy, that they dump out of frustration and boredom.

I find altcoins going back up to be more of a stimulating factor than Bakkt or an ETF that we won't be getting any time soon. The more people focus on these institutions, the more disappointment they will end up going through.

People's expectations of Bakkt are so high that I don't see how it will ever be able to satisfy them in the first few months. Bakkt delivers its Bitcoins out of its reserve that has been obtained by buying coins through the OTC market.

Unless the OTC market dries up, which is something I don't see happen, there isn't much that we can expect other than Bakkt providing some much needed legitimacy to the space.

I don't see how this is a viable option to make profit. It's more like an accidental advantage rather than a well planned move. In other words, it's a move largely based on luck and thus not something to recommend.

It's always easy talking after the price has tanked hard. What if it went back up after $5000? I'm sure that you wouldn't be happy with yourself in that case, and likely panic buy higher to get rid of the bad taste in your mouth.

Hodl is what people should do. You could always choose to long whatever you think is the bottom in order to end up with more coins than before. There are various platforms you can use for that.