Bukele is actually right wing. But we live in times when it's hard to immediately understand if a person is left wing or right wing, because they use a similar populist rhetoric against some abstract "elites", "global establishment" and so on.

And its not nice that Bitcoin gets associated with political fringes, it just adds another reason for preventing Bitcoin from going mainstream.

Those are very weak reason for buying Bitcoin, just your typical "good news". Decision to invest or not should be based on strong long term fundamentals. If you believe that Bitcoin will be more popular, that more people will use it, that people who already use will use it more often, then you should buy it. If you aren't sure about it, than do more research. Because what you are describing is just an impulse buy based on weak news.

I've heard that there's a huge problem with Chinese real estate market - that companies use investors funds to launch new projects rather than finish the existing ones, thus creating a Ponzi scheme, and housing is a huge share of the Chinese GDP, so as this market collapses due to unsustainability, it seriously hurts their whole economy.

Also China loses its status as world's factory, because there are countries with cheaper labor now, so that's another reason why their economy is weaker than their government tries to project.

The problem with CSW is that some people just like to have "alternative" point of view, they like going against the mainstream just for the sake of it, it makes them feel smart and special. So they support CWS and his crusade against Bitcoin Core, similar to how people believe in conspiracy theories. No amount of evidence is going to convince them otherwise. All CWS has to do is to keep lying, doesn't matter if he's doing well or not.

Why would there be a rally right now? The halvening will happen in early 2024. What would drive the Bitcoin price up before that? The only thing that can happen is some random small uptrends, +10-15%, and eventual similar downtrend.

It's been less than 1 year from ATH, how can anyone seriously expect a new rally to new ATH right now?

There a lot of different rainbow charts and other models, many of them are very inaccurate, especially those that were released many years ago. There's no way to know which chart will be closer to reality, because Bitcoin is not really following any mathematical model. The price is the result of millions of subjective perceptions of traders, and we don't even have a good idea of what influences them. The only pattern that so far has been true is that there are big bear and bull markets that happen around the halvenings, but their precise magnitude can't be determined by any models.

What is your goal exactly? It sounds like you are treating this forum as a career, like getting a high rank and then joining a campaign. Because otherwise there's no responsibilities here, you don't need a high rank to use all the valuable features of this forum, it's simply a place to discuss Bitcoin.

If you want to earn a lot of merit, then it's better to specialize in something as a beginner - the inner workings of Bitcoin, trading, economics, altcoins and so on. Because generally you need to show some good insight to earn merit, and as a beginner it's simply not possible to learn everything about all topics in short time.

Bitcoin doesn't have double-charging, but any mistake in Bitcoin is nearly guaranteed to be final. Two biggest problems with using Bitcoin are hacks and accidnetal loss. Hacks happen with fiat too, but at least with fiat there's some chance to return your money, plus banks are trying to take precautions, like calling your number if someone tries to withdraw your money. But permanently losing access to account simply does not exist with fiat, you can just go to your bank with your id and have it restored, or even do it online. With Bitcoin if you lost your wallet file and backup, you won't see your coins ever again.

Does it even matter? Everything changes its value. With the recent inflation, some goods went up by 20%, some by 50% and some even became cheaper. It's also very different from country to country. And Bitcoin market recently reacted negatively to inflation, rather than being a hedge against it, probably because Bitcoin is more of an asset for "good" times rather than "bad" times.

Regulating Bitcoin requires resources, and not everyone in the government thinks that it's worth it to allocate them to tighten the grip on Bitcoin. They are trying to make it the responsibility of centralized exchanges and banks, expand the existing financial monitoring rules to cover transactions linked to crypto. This is easier than creating government-owned departments of crypto monitoring and trying to go after the decentralized use of crypto, which they understand is not feasible.

People often compare certain markets to gambling when they disapprove of them, but strictly speaking, it's not correct. Gambling is a game of known and truly random probability. The market movements are not random, it's just that they can't be well predicted when the market is purely speculative. This is what makes crypto market look like gambling - you can't predict the outcome, just like with random chance, even though the outcome is not random. That's why investors like stocks, bonds and other traditional assets - you can predict their value with mathematical models.

Yes, without exchanges Bitcoin would have a fraction of today's adoption and price - exchanges make buying and selling Bitcoin easier and cheaper. Few people want to buy Bitcoin through p2p trading, because of the risks of getting scammed and sometimes higher fees compared to centralized exchanges. And without centralized exchanges there wouldn't be traders and big investors, so the price would be much lower than it is now.

EU is not a major mining region, so a hypothetical mining ban there would be of little consequence for Bitcoin network. Bitcoin very gracefully took China's mining ban, so you shouldn't be too scared about such things. I would be more worried if EU tried to ban trading and other uses of Bitcoin - that would actually be very bad, because EU is among the largest economies in the world, if that happens, a lot trading volume and adoption potential will be lost. But I doubt EU would take such a dramatic step - they are not China.

Because it's gambling. Your anecdotes are irrelevant. Come back to me when you will have 1000 closed altcoin trades, and over 50% of them will be profitable. Because a couple of profitable trades mean nothing. It's like going to a casino, winning your first bet and thinking that casino is a viable way to make money.

How many times in your life did you regret not being able to pay someone $0.0000001?


Bitcoin doesn't actually solve those problems. Bitcoin is a radically different system with its own pros and cons. Saying that Bitcoin solves problems of fiat is like saying that an airplane solved the problems of a car.

It's very common in Bitcoin community to compare certain aspects of Bitcoin with fiat and ignore the full picture.

The best way to avoid crypto scams is to just not touch altcoins. It's not worth it, don't think that you have the knowledge and skill to recognize a hidden gem that will go x1000 - you don't and they don't exist. Crypto markets are markets of pump and dump schemes, the insiders and manipulators are profiting the most, while the masses of traders are losing their money.

Trading crypto is like participating in a HYIP - everyone knows that it's a scam, but still people participate in it, because they think they can outsmart others. But the house always wins.

How to make crypto sound like a cult in one simple step


Why should we teach young people about a payment method at best, ponzi scheme at worst? Do we teach kids in school how to use PayPal? How to open a bank account? Why should crypto be treated differently?


This is actually not a bad idea, it can be incorporated into some economics lessons or computer science lessons.

In some way, there is no difference between a tulip and Bitcoin. Both have their prices formed purely by supply and demand on an open market. Tulips had one huge bubble and they didn't recover from the crash. Bitcoin has many bubbles and it recovers from them. But there's no guarantee that Bitcoin will continue recovering, it could stabilize or even decline. Tulips utility was overestimated, same can happen to Bitcoin or any other asset.

We all know that Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency, censorship-resistant payment method and so on, but how much such solution should cost? 100 billions? 1 trillion? 10 trillion? No one can make a good argument here, it's pure guess, pure speculation.

I doubt that this failure alone could become Facebook's undoing, but it could be a step towards it. Facebook is still too big to fail, but if it continues to be mismanaged and competition would provide better alternatives to online socializing, it could decline significantly in 10-15 years.


Maybe 15 billion is not a massive sum for a company like Meta, but the fact that it's spent on overly-ambitious project with low chance of success and in an untransparent way, that's certainly a bad sign for investors.

Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went



I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.