I'm not sure if I should agree that being a maximalist as per the official definition of the term is that bad unless the said BTC maximalist strongly opposes necessary upgrades. Now let's wonder: is higher speed really needed in the Bitcoin network? Would a higher speed truly make BTC better in any way besides looking better on a "BTC vs <insert alt here>" comparison?

Regarding privacy, I honestly think BTC would have not been here anymore if everything went through Tor or was just obfuscated the way Monero does it. We have already seen enough resistance against BTC from authorities - imagine what would've happened if Monero was to be the first crypto out there.

I honestly thought that being a BTC maximalist means just that you would never give up BTC for anything or admit there are better coins out there than it. Anyway, as long as speed, fees etc do not bother us, I think we don't need tweaks. You could go back to the "what happens if a satoshi becomes a dollar" debate - why bother changing the denomination now if it's not a problem yet, right?

I have to agree with @ranochigo - hot wallets are as safe as you make them be. But knowing that so many people don't have much security knowledge, hardware wallets are usually more advisable for the average person.

If by "bank cards with hot wallets" you are referring to crypto cards like Wirex (not sure if this one still exists), it's way less safer imo than having a wallet that is non custodial, one for which you make your own rules. Storing your money on custodial wallets means holding your money in someone else's pockets. As I mentioned yesterday in another post of mine, I would not advise linking your Bitcoins with banks in any way.

While it's a very very risky move if they're willing to convert it due to the pandemic, I get what they feel. Restaurants have been pretty brutally affected by the pandemic and as an owner of one, having to close indoor activities (here in Romania at least) and lessening the amount of tables and chairs for outdoor restaurants have drastically lowered down their earnings. BUT, is it the best idea to take it all and push it into BTC? It's quite risky considering BTC isn"t considered a safe haven asset necessarily, isn't it?

I do not think it makes sense from an economical viewpoint to have a stablecoin become harder to be produced (at least not in a decentralized way) every X years. If you want it to be stable, you need to control the supply. Otherwise, supply would increase/decrease its value accordingly. Therefore, the probably only way a coin can be constantly stable is through centralization.

Like, if you had USDT suddenly turning from all those billions of coins into only a million while maintaining the exact same market and demand, wouldn't it boom even if it's supposed to be sitting at the price level of one USD?

I wish I could agree with you, but it totally depends on what "better" means to the larger percentage of people. Because while back in 2010 BTC might've only had tech geeks and privacy-seeking guys interested, today the thing that apparently matters the most is its value and how fast it is.

This is the best launchpad for centralized currencies: extremely fast (almost instant), close to zero fees, small price but with high enough market cap and so on.. how convenient, right? Let's put everything "financial freedom" means to the side and sustain something that enslaves us even more than the current system we all have to be living in. This is how the average person unfortunately thinks, and I honestly believe there will be a Bitcoin replacement at some point as well. Of course, it will not be decentralized nor will it sustain any of Satoshi's ideas but it'll be shaped up in such a way that it'll become an actual competitor. And yeah, that's like fooling the mass to think the fashion industry could somehow compete with the tech. Bullshit.

To be honest, I haven't done a proper chart check of the current BTC bullish pattern vs previous ones. If we're following previous patterns, it must be my mind playing games on me then. However, I've seen and been fooled by so much "similar pattern" stuff on TradingView I'm not even sure if I should believe it anymore, lol.

I've been around since 2013 and I've learned a lot out here. One thing I know is, I would've had way more BTC now if I was to never sell. But it does get so much harder to abstain from selling when you know you have creepy falls like $1.3k to sub-$200 or $20k to $3k - and especially during the beginning of 2020 when, AFAIK, commodities went straight up while BTC got dumped hard. I obviously also have way more confidence than I used to have years ago and these events don't really affect me anymore at all.

I stopped playing with my BTC for the short term specifically for the amount of times I've wrongfully done so. Rather than being constantly emotionally challenged and making wrong moves at the wrong times, I'd rather just accumulate and hodl onto that sum. Without a very strong emotional control, you'd fuck up your BTC before you know it.

About percentages of profit I consider enough, "to each their own" is the best way to go, I guess. Thinking of those who bought at $1 and sold at $100, they might regret it right now but they never knew it'd ever reach $10k, did they? Some people struggle getting 20% profit in an entire year with stocks. Hell, some struggle doubling their stocks portfolio in half a decade. Making the same people take a look over the BTC chart would probably get pissed off. You could purchase today, sell at $100k and 5 years later a Bitcoin is worth $10M. You just never know, but as soon as you're happy with the profit why not cash it out if that's your plan?

Then, it all goes down to what you care more about: USD value or total amount of BTC? I personally care more about the latter right now. Hence, I don't even care about drops anymore. As I said, that's just one more opportunity for me to accumulate more. Whether my BTC net worth will be a hundred bucks or ten million in the next few years, all I want is to know that I do have a financial freedom I can enjoy - be it through a drink or a luxury mansion.

I would personally stay away from linking Bitcoin to any bank-like systems. Guess we all know banks are there not to help us but to bait us into basically debt slavery.

I'm not 100% sure if by "creating similar systems in Bitcoin" you mean that we should have more merchants adopting this cashback/points system or you meant that we should have this system somehow directly implemented in the Bitcoin Core. With the second option, I don't know honestly if it's even realizable..

As others answered before me, there are already merchants doing these discounts. It is completely their choice and should stay that way. But while this kind of system would bait more people into BTC, do we really need to bait anyone or do we want natural adoption? I personally believe the latter is way healthier.

Now on the other hand, considering we'll soon enough have to confront a quite harsh battle between BTC and national cryptos, these "baits" and assimilating BTC with them/banks could come in as a very handy thing to convince people that financial freedom is way more important..

While I'm very bullish, Goldstein's argument falls short imo. Does the "statistical" thing say anything besides the fact that right now people are bullish on BTC? I'm quite sure that a lot of those who are holding right now until "up to $100,000" would sell in panic if BTC fell to $1k again.

This is a psyhcological thing, and such events do have a strong impact. There are way better arguments to use than the number of people who are now ready to hodl for a long time - especially as BTC has been steadily growing up in the last months. And then, what happens if BTC gets to $100k? Wouldn't a lot of those people sell and pull back the price?

Times change and emotional impacts are significant - and 2020 proved us this is as true as it can be.

Oh well, considering all the 2020 events, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sudden insane chart move. The thing is, it does seem to be slower paced if you compare it to past pumps.

"20% profit? Take it! Nobody killed themselves for being on profit", someone told me a long time ago. Definitely relative, yet this is  still a funny thing I'll probably never forget.

I honestly don't really care about short term so there's no position I've taken. Meant to say I have no idea about short term (especially as heavier dumps aren't that rare for this one) while I'm pretty bullish on the longer term. Like, maybe tomorrow it drops back to $10k. Maybe it goes up or stays around $12k. I don't really care tho, all I care for is the price we'll have in a matter of years - and solely based on "adoption" & halving, I believe the future is holding a sweet price tag for us.

Price moves on a quite slow pace nowadays - or might be me not being that obsessed with checking it 24/7 anymore. But slower bumps are much healthier imo than what we've had few years ago.

As an advice, I'm not sure I can give one that'd really be efficient besides assessing your risks and investing what you can afford to lose. In my opinion, while short term has a little question mark, longer term should look great. But even if it ends up not being so, I'd take it as an opportunity to buy it. My biggest reason is the halving. 2021 is going to be an interesting year.

Depends. Could turn out to be the opposite instead. I guess luck is a thing here as well.

I think the probability that you'd get wrecked is approximately the same whether you use hot wallets or HWs if you have no clue what you're doing or do not properly check tx details beforehand. Most of these scams happen because newbies either aren't reminded enough times (or skip the warning) that you should never expose your privkeys/seed or they don't verify if addresses match before broadcasting a transaction.

So the HWs are indeed way safer imo, but your seed doesn't have much to do with their safety. You'd have to never get access to the seed in order to "be completely safe" - and that leaves you with no backup, so it gets actually worse. All I'm hoping for is that there'll never be some freaky exploit that lets a bad actor change the address on a HW display. That'd do a ton of harm to whoever'd have both their HW and PC infected.

Totally depends on what I'd want it to be: a heavily adopted crypto or just be the "off-grid man's coin". I'd rather choose the latter. Therefore, I wouldn't change much - probably just smaller denomination and the option to go off-grid as in an "incognito mode" (never studied it but I think it's possible). That'd instantly make it become the state's enemy tho.

The more convenient it is, the more people will use it => the heavier regulations are and the harder staying off the track is. I'm personally happy with BTC the way it is right now.

I have actually considered doing this a while ago, but I gave up the thought. As far as I can tell, it's a centralized token.. right? What I was willing to do is transform my BTC into WBTC so that I could use it on decentralized ETH exchanges with other tokens to take in profits without having to worry about KYC and other stuff. I suspect other people have done the same - it's more convenient than having to be on two blockchains, I guess. Otherwise, I see no reason to use WBTC. Like, why use a "BTC replica" when you could use the real one instead?

I like the "gold vs Bitcoin" debate although it's probably been overly discussed, but using this argument to convince someone to buy BTC through a hypothetical scenario that seems close to impossible for at least the next decade such as "Gold will replace Bitcoin" is nothing but nonsense.

This is as close as it can get to new artists being told by their fans they're the new Eminem or something. Just doesn't make sense. Bitcoin will be different compared to gold, no matter how many similarities they have. It's probably going to go its own way and there will always be different advantages and disadvantages with both. Advertise Bitcoin for what it is.

I personally think Monero, other older privacy coins and DigiByte are good options. DGB has been doing quite excellent in the last few months, but I am afraid a dump is coming sooner or later. I'm just really wondering whether they'll now come up with anything new & helpful at all or not (haven't followed it recently).

Monero.. it has performed quite well this year and I believe it'll become the "rebel's coin" sooner or later, desired by dudes interested in protecting their own privacy. I'm very, very bullish on XMR considering the so-unsignificant amount of people caring abut privacy at all at the moment. In time, especially as technology "evolves", I have hopes people'll start waking up.

If businesses are affected, everyone else probably will be as well. Restrictions are usually not imposed to exchanges themselves but to us as customers (see KYC for reference), and that ends up as a big headache for all of us. I get that advisors could be hired, but does that really help if the decision is still in the Congressman's hand?

And you haven't had to borrow $400k to do so (hopefully). Think about it: whoever bought 5 years ago BTC under $200 now has more than 6000% profit. Imagine borrowing $400k and making a trading mistake - you'd screw up your entire life.

The perfect recipe for disaster. First of all, why make it sound like Bitcoin is perfect and hide its disadvantages? It's not like you're trying to advertise some product. Then.. those other two points I've quoted do nothing besides making the other person imagine Bitcoin is the place you go to when you want to get rich.

False ideas such as "Bitcoin makes you rich" is literally the perfect recipe for disaster - especially if you're new in the space. Better be honest instead and tell them the truth. Bitcoin is probably one of the most volatile assets, which means you can double your amount as fast and easy as getting it halvened.

I just don't. I found out that most of the times I try to explain how Bitcoin works, it ends up being a waste of time. What I'd rather do is just go on and tell them as simply as I can the advantages of BTC, like: it's decentralized so nobody has control over it, you make your own privacy, supply is limited and it cannot be faked/double-spent.

If someone's then interested to read more, they'll do the research themselves. Otherwise, talking about how amazing it is usually ends with them wanting to purchase BTC just for its possible value increase.

I only consider centralized exchanges viable for traders. There isn't really any DEX you can go through that lets you reliably daytrade, so it's the only remaining option. If you're willing to focus completely on privacy and freedom, then go for a DEX instead but don't be surprised if you don't see volume or offers at all. While I hoped they'd become a hype this year, unfortunately to me it looks like the opposite is actually happening.

Other stuff you might be interested in is mixers and Monero, although they're kinda starting to get unofficially "banned" every now and then on various platforms. Also, don't you think using a DEX is enough for your privacy to be improved. You probably have to change many other habits, such as using wallet addresses separately instead of linking them together through txs (address control if I remember the name correctly). And now that you have already had KYC requests, it might be a good idea to never use your old addresses again - perhaps you could start a new wallet instead, to avoid small but costly mistakes such as forgetting to use address control.

When you joined the exchange you complained about in the last thread, you accepted some terms - including KYC possible verification. Unfortunately, it's what regulations push for under silly excuses such as "the fight against illegal activity"..

This actually applies not only to cryptocurrencies but to your entire life: overcome your fears by finding what causes the fear in the first place.

But this stuff doesn't really fit everyone. I guess this could be put in an equality relationship with being open-minded, especially because some people would rather just not know what they're doing wrong at all than learn and fix the issues.

Like, instead of quitting trading because you've always done it wrong, maybe it's time to study more about trading and chart analysis. If you think you can handle more info while maintaining your interest, then just find out the cause of your fear and fix it.