I am so calm and confident about Bitcoin, yet I couldn't sleep and decided to take a peek at the price - $7290! And earlier today we were free falling to $6400. This is very good bullish sign! And bakkt hit record highs again - over 6200 bitcoins put into contracts today! I guess some of them were bought in the last 24 hours, so bakkt has some impact on the price after all!

Edit. The price shot up to 7440 while I was writing!

It depends how big is the loan. I for example have 2 credit cards which are almost empty. I pay 100 euro each month with 4-5% interest . The sum I owe is around 6 months salary. I never had any worries even when we fell at 3K which is way below my investment point at $4800. On the contrary, I emptied the cards even more and I dind't think to fill them even above 12K. One of the reasons is that I am afraid someone can steal the sum while shopping (it happened through paypal once). Yesterday I ordered a rare medicine for my eye and I had to enter my credit card number in a not well known website. Luckily they took only the sum that was right and hopefully I will get that medicine. But my insurance is that my card is almost empty anyway. I guess I can live even with a double debt, if the monthly payment is low enough, for a long time. The most important thing is to learn to hodl no matter the circumstances. If you can't, a loan is a NO GO. If you can, then a reasonably small loan is not a bad idea in my opinion.

It is good that you continue to buy, I admire that. But the next part about 3K sounds to me like gembitz. He is notorious for his moronic "weeee" posts claiming that the price will fall 50% from the current point.
Yeah, I remember you said the same for getting to 8K, when we were nearly 14K, then 6K when we were at 11K, now 3K. If we get at 3K you will say the same for 1K. You had 4 months from Dec 2018 to April 2019 to buy at 3K and you didn't. And besides, one year ago the crash happened because there were no indications that the price will recover soon. I can't imagine how the weak hands that sold at 3K felt when the price hit 14K only 3 months later. I guess not good at all. Now the halving is only 5 months away. So to have expectations of reaching this low again is softly speaking unrealistic. I am just writing this so that you are not fooling yourself and one day to regret for underinvesting. The current price is beyond good for investing more. Surely, it may fall a bit more, but in the end will it make a difference, if you are a strong hand and hodl until 30-40-50-100K or whatever price target you choose? #stronghands

The chart's bottom looks sexy for placing a buy order.

If I have to summarize this year, I would say that once again  Bitcoin has proved to the world that the claim that the 2017 bubble had burst, was not true. Although in early 2019 the price hit $3,100, a gradual growth began. This growth naturally reached $14 000, i.e. 70% of previous ATH,  without the help of mass psychosis from an upcoming event. This proves that in 2017 Bitcoin experienced a natural cycle of growth, with a demand-supply ratio at the core rather than some global "tulip mania". The slow decline to $7 000 in 6 months after the AYH, compared to the many quick and steep crashes in 2017-2018  only confirms that the price is in the process of stabilization, before the next bull cycle begins/resumes.  

C'mon 1% daily piranha traders, you miss the huge pump from 7195 to 7210. Go, eat that profit immediately!

Edit. And 3 min later back to 7195. Nice job, guys, you got immensely rich!

I am just curious why every time we have some big or small increase, a dump follows below the starting point of the "pump"? Are these the 1%-daily-profit-seeking-traders, or the casual way the closing of short/long positions work? Or even worse, whale shorters, who defend their shorts by dumping on Bitstamp their prepared bitcoins for this purpose? Perhaps some experienced trader can share his thoughts? And in this regard, is the longs vs shorts ratio on Bitfinex (293 mln vs 45 mln) a threat for the price, i.e. a potential long squeeze? I've noticed that Bitfinex longs are more stable than on Bitmex. The volume is the same as it was when the price was above 10K. Better funded perhaps, so it is hard to get a long squeeze even from 10K down to 7K. On Bitmex there is parity (312 vs 330 mln).

In general I like your thinking except in cases like this, where you either didn't read carefully or write without thinking. But I am in a good mood, so I will explain the obvious.
-If you sell your coins, you are not an owner anymore. You once were, but the statistics cover only the addresses with a positive balance NOW, amInotRite?
-If you transfer most of your coins to an exchange but keep at least some dust in one of your addresses, then you are technically still an owner.
-If you transfer ALL of your coins to a personal address which is given by an exchange, you are technically not an owner, because there is a chance that the exchange or a hacker can scam you and you won't be able to withdraw it back. You heard about "Not your keys, not your coins" (MtGox hinted).  BUT, I wasn't even talking about this case, because these addresses might be counted by this survey. I was referring to the last type:
-Finally, if you give ALL your coins to a friend, trust, OTC, whatever, and you don't have a personal address and ability to controll your bitcoins, then how the HELL you can claim you are an owner?!? You are a seller who is in process of selling, or shorting, or trading or whatever. The same applies for non physical futures trading. Why should we count those people as Bitcoin investors? They are like every other gambler who puts money on horses or whatever. No matter there might be millions of them. The point of this survey is to show the number of addresses hence people behind them (as an estimate), who are involved in real possesion of BTC at this particular moment. And this number is shockingly low <<28 mil, which is a very good bullish sign, so let's not spoil it with  nonsense verbiage anymore, mmmkey?

I think it is safe to say that BTC owner is someone who owns the keys. At the moment  such person deposits ALL his BTC's on an exchange, he delivers the possesion to the exchange. Whether he sells them immediately or waits for better price does not make him BTC owner anymore. And if someone buys BTC's but keeps them on an exchange he is also not an owner. These people are traders who don't care what they trade, only care for the profit. Therefore, the number of BTC owners (real investors) is less than 28 mil. Provided that almost everyone has at least 2 addresses (and some more than 10), the real number is much smaller, probably below 14 mil. Compared with the Earth population and the 3 mil BTC's left to be mined, it is clear that the mass adoption has only just begun.

Trinidad and Tobago is better. Beach, palm trees, nice BTC profit+mining income=happiness!  

I have a very similar exerience. I went full in at prices $4600-4800 in 2017. This happened after one awful trade in August, when I decided that the bull run is over and sold everything at $2700, one day before the first mega pump above $3K. It was very unfortunate since the price returned at 3K but only after I bought back what I had with double amount of fiat (i.e. all my savings). Not that I wanted to trade, but I was afraid of the coming fork, which threatened to destroy the price for a long time. After that, in November at the day of the fork, I sold half of my stash because of the dump I feared. Instead, the fork was cancelled, there was a bull run and I bought back at a higher price again. Unfortunately at this time kraken didn't fill the existing buying orders below my rebuying point and I lost something more because of it.

Finally, I sold half of my stash in December in the day I've read an article how manipulators will use futures to dump the price. It was clear to me that soon the futures will kill the bull run. The unfortunate thing is that I sold at 13K and few hours later the same day the price shot up to 17K. I was very frustrated and bought back at the first dip to 15K. This was my last sale. Needless to say I've become a hardcore hodler since then.

All this is very unfortunate, because I've missed so many trains. I've heard about Bitcoin in 2015 when the price was 300$. I didn't even know how the price was forming and thought at that time that the miners offer this price to the buyers (crazy, I know). At that time I decided to build  gpu rigs to mine Ethereum and invested 10K euro. Although I missed the Ethereum bull runs, I made some profit of 15K euro, which I constantly changed between USDT and Bitcoin because of the crashes in 2017. Because of these fails, I didn't sell even a satoshi at 20K or 14K this year, which turned against me again. This is in short my lamentable story. Very, very bad luck, like in my whole life. Some times I think because of me Bitcoin entered this bear market, as if someone above doesn't want me to be rich. My only weapon is the unique stubborness which helped my entire life to endure all bad things and have some professional success.

Just another day in Bitcoinland. Some bears got pissed by the pump from 7100 to 7800 and dumped back to 7100. Clearly, they want to make the impression of a long downtrend, and can't let bull signs to slip out. They have a new tactics. Instead of few big dumps, they just stop the big pumps which require less coins. Well played bears, well played! Hopefully, one day the knife you are catching will cut off your fingers!  

I think most of these transfers are betweed addresses of the exchanges even if some are not known for sure. For example, what whale will buy at bittrex with so small volume compared to the other main exchanges? It will take weeks to accumulate on that exchange provided he is the only buyer. But of course, such "whale" activities are good for twitter FUD  There are still many morons who sell at such "news".

In Bitcoinland everything is possible. Even a halving dump. I think not even the hardcore bulls here think for granted that several days after the halving the price will shoot up to 100K. It is possible, but not 100% sure. Even more, a price above 10K is not guaranteed as well. The effect of the halving can be felt only when the weak hands are gone and the whales stop dumping. I mean, we can't compare 900 BTC less on the market for a day, if we had some ponzi or individual dumping 100K BTC in several days. I think some of the dumps, if not all, were caused by few individuals who got quickly rich in BTC and hurry to sell them even with a 50% loss. Nobody can prevent a price crash then. BUT, what the halving means is that under the normal trading, the balance is changed in favour of the demand. So, we can expect the actual effect no early than 1 year after the event (which may be earlier, or later - again nothing is certain). And the effect will require also either many buyers, or a few but very rich to pump the price. And when the price surpasses 10K, it should be able to hold and stay above that. We almost succeeded keeping that price this Summer, but bad actors (manipulator shorters if they still exist, big miners with newer asics, weak hands) dumped too many BTC to crash the price. Hopefully, after the halving all odds will be in our favour. But nothing is granted, of course.

I will continue to buy moar and HODL, no matter the dissapointments. I have my beliefs, but not like a "idée fixe". If it happens - fine! if not, well I probably will still have at least 2x profit. I can live even with the loss in terms of fiat, like earlier this year. But I think that the current price is too low both for the miners and for the hodlers, so we should be able to stay away from the 6K area. If we fall below that, I will throw every fiat possible to find, even the kitchen sink,   and buy moar! #stronghands #HODL

When bakkt started everyone was very dissapointed. With a volume of several bitcoins per day, it was not exactly the moon event. This resulted in massive sell off of the weak hands that hoped for quich money. But then slowly things began to change. With a record over 5K BTC per day and above 2K each day, it definitely is a game changer. Give it a year or two. Paired with the halving, this will have some serious impact on the price for sure.

bakkt 4000BTC+

The day started so bad, going down to 6 800. Now it ends up above 7 500$. And this is how the new bull journey begins! Who bought - bought!

Edit. I just saw that bakkt hit a new record again - above 3400 BTC until now. Well played bakkt boys, well played!

Mic said he lost his Ledger nano S. If he has written on paper his seed, nothing is lost, unless his PIN and password for Ledger live were stollen toghether with the device. Otherwise, mic has nothing to worry about. He may take control of his bitcoins either by software wallet (not reccomended) or by purchasing new device and entering the seed. I think the best way is to keep a note with the seed + pin on a very safe place in your house, where a burglar would never check. And to remember the seed. It takes some time, but it can be done. I really hope mic hodl stash is OK.

Camera recorded bear escape:

Hi! Could you give me an example of tuning AMD 570 for Turtle coin? More specifically, which is the most power efficient core clock/voltage? I've read the documentation and it said for the core 1050 mhz, but how low can the voltage go - 800V or even less? Currently I am 1150/850 but the power consumption is 20% more than CN-r.