We know that Bitcoin can be store of value as well as a currency (medium for buy and sell) which anybody can take advantage of. Now, how come it is the store of value that is given more emphasis? Maybe because many of those who have Bitcoin are holding it in anticipation that its price will soon go up...in other words it has become the big tool for speculation. Since I can not speculate on the real gold, I have my eyes fixed on Bitcoin instead. I am saving all the Bitcoin I can get because I am preparing my hoard for the possible bull run in 2020 because of the halving scheduled middle of the year.

Now, there is nothing wrong with speculations because in the first many people are getting into Bitcoin so they can speculate and if there is no anticipation of its value to soar many will not be in Bitcoin, in the first place. The only thing is that too much speculative hoarding can mean that less and less business will go to the many merchants who decided to accept Bitcoin as part of the adoption we are all dreaming of.

There seems to be a tug between these two concerns (store of value or medium of exchange).

I have some Eth so I am hoping that a big bull run can happen to this coin by 2020. Good to see that maybe developers working for Ethereum are now really so serious in making sure that scalability problems are solved once and for all. This problem has been hounding the network for the past many months and it is time they tackled it with the focus on effectively answering the said malady. I know that there are people who are criticizing and do not believe on Ethereum and its leader Vitalik Buterin but I still see a big potential of this cryptocurrency and what it can offer in the future. As the next in line to Bitcoin, it must shape up, innovate a lot and always be on its feet for new challenges ahead.

Sextortion is getting more popular and can soon be ingrained into our consciousness and our online experiences. I am hoping you are not one of the growing victim of this another form of a blackmail. So what is sextortion, anyway?


Just like ransonware, sextortion find it very convenient to demand money from their victims via cryptocurrency like Bitcoin but now they found an alternative darling and it is Litecoin.


One thing for sure, people can get so creative in finding ways and means to fool others and victimize them out of their hard-earned money and they will not stop until they are caught by authorities (which can be so hard to do, by the way). Now, they are also into cryptocurrency making the operation easier and convenient and I assumed with wider reach.

Is there anybody here who experienced being (or who know someone who was) a victim of sextortion and was asked to pay in Bitcoin or Litecoin?

As far as cryptocurrency market is concerned, I think there will always be new projects and they mostly are looking for money from possible investors in return for the coins/tokens they are offering. Not so many of these projects will make it to the market and cryptocurrency exchanges (except for those doing IEOs maybe) and many of them will just be gone into the wind and die a natural (sometimes unnatural too) deaths all because they are just offering nothing but regurgitated platforms -- meaning just copied from those existing ones and just changing the name and some terms.

Many of these projects are started by scammers and their minions whose purpose is just to get as much money from those they can fool to believe and be enticed on what they are peddling to the market. Sadly, scammers can easily get away with their accumulated millions and I am sure many of them are actually based on a secluded island somewhere in the Pacific enjoying the best of life and eating and drinking the most expensive and most delicious feast they can find.

I am not going to recommend any project here since I know that anybody can find them even here in this forum so it is just a matter of looking and then researching for more details, then deciding which is telling the truth, not hyping and has the potential to be the next bright star in this expanding industry. A BIG good luck, though.

Private and OTC transactions for Bitcoins are not included in the data coming from many cryptocurrency exchanges hence we could not really determine with certainty the many details of that market especially its size and volume though maybe there can be those who can make some estimates.  Here is a good explanation on the OTC market:


I read in some publications that there are times when the price of the Bitcoin can severely be affected when Bitcoin miners decided to unload a chunk of the coins they are holding...which resulted into dumping of the coin value in the market. Maybe if they can choose to do OTC then the impact will not be very visible in the exchanges.

Marami talaga tayong maaring matutunan pag sumama tayo sa bounty promotion adventures. Sa ganang akin, sa social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) at sa signature ako naka-concentrate pero alam ko na mas malaking pera ang pwede makuha kung nag-articles din sana ako. Karamihan sa mga projects mo ay mga projects ko din na sinusupurtahan sa bounty at karamihan dun sa mga RED mo ay totoo yung iba talagang sayang lang sa time at effort.

Yun sanang London Block Exchange naging signature ko yan pero waley ang project it was a big joke maganda pa naman sana ang main concept nya as an exchange. Pero ganyan talaga ang buhay dito sa bounty di naman natin talaga ma-determine which among the rest will really make it kaya sali na lang ng sali though syempre tingnan din natin baka may mga red flags na maging another scam lang din.

I still have to explore Abra though I already heard many other Filipino crypto lovers who are reccomending that platform as a good alternative to the most popular and the leader Coins.Ph. Sa pagbasa ko sa karanasan mo sa Abra parang may problema siguro sa kanilang platform. Napakahalaga sa atin na maganda at kaayaaya ang withdrawal process kasi nakakasakit sa ulo yung gulo-gulo ang proceso ng pagkuha ng pera papunta sa ating bulsa. So Tambunting lang pala ang may connection at partnership ang Abra dito sa Pilipinas? Maliit lang pala ang choices ng remittance centers...siguro dapat palawakin pa nila ang choices dito kasi ang mga Pinoy ngayon ay mahilig sa mga sending/receiving money centers tulad ng Palawan, Cebuana Mhuiller, LBC, Rd Pawnshop at Heny Mhuiller.

I am thinking of opening an account in Abra but I might shelve it for now maybe later when Abra is ready with its wide choices of withdrawing the money from their ecosystem. I am hoping that Abra is reading and listening to this post so they can also compete with the leading and innovative Coins.Ph as I fully understand that the healthier is the market competition the better it would be for the consumers/customers.

This is a good analysis and I would be watching for this if this can really be coming trues in the next few days. We are all longing for Bitcoin to get back to the $10K zone as soon as possible. While Bitcoin has been struggling, I can also feel that there remains an energy within the coin to break through this level.


I know that we are just speculating here but market sentiment can be a big factor for the movement of the price of any commodity or currency. Are you of the same argument or do you see that Bitcoin will instead go south and be trading below the $7,000 within the coming week? Is Bitcoin now ready to take over the $10,000 price range?

Whoever own those Bitcoin must be concerned with the security that is why they use multiple addresses rather than a single one though some will not be agreeing with this measure. The increase of the number of addresses holding over 1000 Bitcoin can be explained in  lot of scenarious but we are just actually speculating here. Yes, this can mean more new users getting into Bitcoin or just old members of the gang adding more Bitcoin holdings. We are all dreaming that Bitcoin be evenly distributed to as much people as possible and not just concentrated on the so-called whales but we know that economic realities are coming in to the picture. We are no more at the beginning phase where the coins can be spread by means of maybe a faucet or an airdrop. Right now, though, I am really wondering if there would be effective ways we can do so that more and more people all over the world can be participating in the Bitcoin revolution.

Decentralization is one of the best feature that Bitcoin is offering to all of us...this is the gift and contribution that Satoshi Nakamoto wanted for us to see, experience and appreciate. However, market realities can be different from the ideals. There is now a big concern that Bitcoin mining is getting to be centralized as it is controlled by a few and not democratized or spread well as getting into this enterprise can be requiring a lot of investment on mining equipment and not all locations are suitable for mining due to high cost of inputs especially electricity. With cryptocurrency exchanges, it is still centralized platforms that commands the biggest part of the market. For now, I see no solid solutions to these concerns except if we users and enthusiasts of cryptocurrency will be demanding for more decentralization. One aspect that can b a big factor for centralization is of course, business and the pursuit of profits.

So what is money then?


Anything that can be utilized and accepted as a medium of exchange or used in buy and sell can be categorized as money and according to this definition we can conclude that Bitcoin is money, albeit it is not physical but digital. People should realize that we are now in the era of digitalization so much so that banks are not actually moving the physical fiat money too much as transactions are done electronically on the global basis.

People are not just used to using digital money but this trend is now accelerating so time is coming when many of us will not anymore be asking this same question. Cryptocurrency is the way to the future and nothing can ever stop it, there can be snags but those will be straightened out for good sooner.

I visited the site of the link you posted here and I think that is a good marketplace with a lot of products that one can buy using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and the likes. I even found a Bitcoin ATM for sale for $3,299. Wow! Let's hope that more and more platforms like this will be sprouting all over the world and that they will have brisk volume of crypto-paid transactions.

I am sure that this is just your own personal prediction so I will not be asking you to expound more and to show me possible evidence as that can be a waste of time. Now, among the many predictions especially with the outrageous one done by famous personalities, I think that $100K by 2025 can very much be doable and in fact can be a stretch to some as that can be five years from now. Anyhow, I am taking note of your "fortune telling" skills here and who knows it can be your estimate that can come true. So anything that you want to do in case this will fail (ala John McAfee)?

So this CoinZoom is really a partner of Visa and we can avail of its visa-bearing cards with our accounts linked our digital assets on the platform. This is a big step forward and can definitely be enticing many people to also adopt the cryptocurrency bandwagon using the easy and convenient way people can convert and spend the money from their cryptocurrencies hoard. And since CoinZoom is a regulated exchange, i am assuming that users are more protected under the platform than with those who are not based in the USA.  I am wishing the platform all the power and some luck it needs.

I have been telling my friends that soon Libra is going into the limbo floating somewhere in between hell and purgatory of regulatory universe. With many of the members of the Libra Association starting to disassociate themselves from this very controversial project, all the backers can be gone sooner than Mark Zuckerberg can get to the comfort room. Libra is destined to be strangled principally because this is another project of Facebook which is now known as not a good repository of data and is careless with the privacy of its users. I am suggesting to Mark to redo and change everything on Libra and even change its name...plus get new people to handle the whole project away from him and Facebook.

Naku nakakatakot talaga isipin na maging biktima ng ransomware kasi para tayong nakaranas nyan na nakidnap ang isa nating kapamilya at kailangan na magbayad ng pang-tubos o ransom money.  Marami talagang sa mundong ibabaw na ginagamit ang kanilang kaalaman at talento para makapanggulo lamang ng ibang tao at yumaman sa pamamagitan ng paggawa ng di mabuti.

Sa ganang akin, siguro naman meron na din tayong mga teknolohiya na pwede pangontra kahit papaano sa mga ganitong problema kaya lang ang mga hackers kasi eh napakagaling at sila pa ang nauuna sa mga advanced technologies and strategies so they can be two steps ahead of the game, so to speak.

Kaya nga sabi eh "you can never be too careful" na ibig sabihin sa lahat ng panahon dapat na mag-ingat at wag na wag dalhin ang sarili sa kapahamakan online or even offline as we are entering a very dangerous times ahead.

The main reason why the blockchain technology and Bitcoin came into being was because the centralized financial and banking system generally failed the people which resulted into that recession that took place starting 2008 in the USA which then affected the global economy. We are all for decentralization where there is no concentration of power in just some individuals or in a few sectors...so essentially this is democratization of power. However, getting there can be fraught with a lot of challenges especially since we are disrupting the traditional platforms and old ways of doing things and at the same time we are endangering many entrenched interests and naturally those in power will fight back with a good fight.

I would agree that more adoption of cryptocurrency specifically Bitcoin can hinge a lot on how people understand things on this development and how they gonna about it. We need more people to join us in this movement so that we can be a big force that even the government will recognize and not easily pressured to do against our will and conviction.

The price of Bitcoin is largely driven by speculations and though this can never be the ideal one we are looking for this is a free world and so anybody can be a speculator but with Bitcoin very volatile in 2018 and early 2018 many got burned especially those who were buoyed to buy Bitcoin ATH. We are expecting institutional money to be coming in anytime now and into 2020 but we are not so sure yet if the recently launched Bakkt can be the right vehicle for them...let's see how things will develop on this area.

I am not so sure but I think OpenLibra can just be a big joke of a project. Nobody can actually be sure if Libra can be able to make a splash in the market now that there is a growing number of oppositions from different sides of the world. The pressure has been too much that many of its backers (the ones making up the Libra Association) have now started to get out from the project and I think this can't take until the end of the year and Facebook will be announcing that the project is put on hold for the time being. The reputation and resources of Facebook is not doing any good to the project.

And then suddenly we have this OpenLibra? Oh well, I am not shocked to read an update of the project here:


Now, that can be an amazing start of a project that is supposedly a fork of the original Libra. At any rate, this can be a very good entertainment for all of us in the world of cryptocurrency. OpenLibra, Libra, Joker!

I think that only real victims of scams will fully understand the message that you are driving at. We need regulations and strict implementation of the rules in this industry because we are almost run over by so many scams, frauds and abusive people not to mention the hackers, phishers and the likes. This industry will not mature if there will be no clear ways that we can rely on against the man scammers now putting up their strong presence in here. Deregulation and decentralization are two good things and I am supporting these but there should be clear path to deal with this cancer of the industry otherwise people will start to lose trust and confidence with us. The industry itself must initiate self-regulation in response to this big problem so that we can work hand in hand with authorities to run after these scammers and fraudsters.

This is a good education on Bitcoin Bubble and if there is one thing I learn here is that Bitcoin can go into a bubble phase, go popped and yet it is not going anywhere or be dead just like the many other examples (remember the Tulip craze which is also popularly compared to Bitcoin). Now, for people who entered Bitcoin like say when the price was just $200 or even $500, they would not care anything about bubble because if Bitcoin can get back to $1,000 they are not losing anything but the same can't be said with people who foolishly bought Bitcoin ATH of almost $20K...either they take a big loss or continually wait until a big, big bull run can occur.

The pendulum is now shifting heavily in favor of Bitcoin as we can see the dominance of it eating the percentage that altcoins commanded months ago. I guess this is quite a telltale sign that people are getting tired of many projects on the world of cryptocurrency that are not actually performing well as expected. Now, coupled with all the scams, frauds and failures we all experienced, the sentiment and confidence plastered to many altcoins are eroding fast.

Looking long-term, this unbalanced situation is, of course, not good for alts and come the Bitcoin halving in 2020 there is a bigger possibility that they can still be left behind except maybe the top 5 or even the top 10 alts.  As of now, we don't know when the market movement can be shifting back to alts but I know that it will only happen if we can inspire more trust and confidence with them.