Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen said this is a bubble

[QuestionAuthority]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

[QuestionAuthority]

“The issue is that, like any investment vehicle, the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (forms of digital money) is subject to manipulation by large entities that have a stake in it, especially large-scale traders. The cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex is the main actor to think about here.

Bitfinex’s CEO is also the CEO of a company called Tether Limited, which issues tethers (also known as USDT), a pegged cryptocurrency; that is, the tether’s value is pegged directly to that of the U.S. dollar. To do so, Tether commits to keep the dollar equivalent of all USDT value in reserves at all times. Tether offers a way to own and move fiat currency across different cryptocurrencies and exchanges without the need to convert crypto assets into dollars. That means transactions are fast and cheap, yet the price of the currency is as stable as the U.S. dollar, in theory.”

http://fortune.com/2017/11/29/bitcoin-price-11000-nasdaq-cme-futures/

[UZIzzzz]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

Although I think there is a lot of bubble in the cryptocurrency market today, we can still make money from it, right?

[QuestionAuthority]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

Although I think there is a lot of bubble in the cryptocurrency market today, we can still make money from it, right?

Well, sure you can make money if you know when to get out but will the manipulation hurt the public’s perception of bitcoin? Will a major crash make another large group of people that were screwed over in bitcoinland refuse to ever use bitcoin again?

[timikulit]

Thank you for this update. If USDT Tether is sued by USA government what will happen? will bitcoin crash or not? and in the bottom of the article there is an advise.

"Ultimately he believes that those investors who buy and hold Bitcoin will be better off than those who try to make a quick buck by buying and then selling their Bitcoin as quickly as possible"

So it is still safe to collect and store more bitcoins?

[QuestionAuthority]

Thank you for this update. If USDT Tether is sued by USA government what will happen? will bitcoin crash or not? and in the bottom of the article there is an advise.

"Ultimately he believes that those investors who buy and hold Bitcoin will be better off than those who try to make a quick buck by buying and then selling their Bitcoin as quickly as possible"

So it is still safe to collect and store more bitcoins?

I think what he means is Bitcoin is rising too much too fast. It would be better for people to buy and hold for a long time and let the price rise slowly. Instead people are buying and selling fast. That will cause a crash.

It’s as safe now as it’s ever been. As Gavin Andresen has said many times, only buy with money you can afford to lose.

[Ozero]

When bitcoin last month rose sharply in price to $ 20,000, many sane people were able to make sure that bitcoin was simply pumped up as a financial bubble at the expense of an agiotage speculative demand for it in the hope of people making a profit. Such uncontrolled growth of bitcoin is fraught with great danger both from the point of view of the possibility that bitcoin may burst like a bubble, and also because many states will try to protect their economy from unbalancing their own by restricting or even prohibiting the passage of bitcoin into these countries.

[QuestionAuthority]

This article perfectly describes what’s going on. It’s fairly long but well worth the read.

https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2017/12/06/bitcoin-bitfinex-tether-risk-crashing/

If your money is absolutely worthless to you then don’t read this. Just keep pouring money into bitcoin until the crash happens. You’ve been warned and now have no excuse. You also lose the right to come to this forum and bitch about the loss later. Every time one of you bitches that you lost all of your money I’m going to laugh at you and post this thread under your whining.

[Reatim]

When bitcoin last month rose sharply in price to $ 20,000, many sane people were able to make sure that bitcoin was simply pumped up as a financial bubble at the expense of an agiotage speculative demand for it in the hope of people making a profit. Such uncontrolled growth of bitcoin is fraught with great danger both from the point of view of the possibility that bitcoin may burst like a bubble, and also because many states will try to protect their economy from unbalancing their own by restricting or even prohibiting the passage of bitcoin into these countries.

Yeah, we have seen a lot of uncontrollable buying behavior last month. It's really scary to see bitcoin being pushed to almost $20K that time. Investors are buying at top price, which make me thinks that its going to burst any moment. Specially when all this bitcoin future contracts come up, most investors didn't understand what it is and keeps buying bitcoin until we hit a wall and people started to cash out pulling the price to $12K-$13K.

This article perfectly describes what’s going on. It’s fairly long but well worth the read.

https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2017/12/06/bitcoin-bitfinex-tether-risk-crashing/

If your money is absolutely worthless to you then don’t read this. Just keep pouring money into bitcoin until the crash happens. You’ve been warned and now have no excuse. You also lose the right to come to this forum and bitch about the loss later. Every time one of you bitches that you lost all of your money I’m going to laugh at you and post this thread under your whining.

And those who are bitching are newcomers in the market thinking that they can make money in crypto by just pouring their cash into the ecosystem. And then goes to the forum asking for advise because in the first place they didn't know what they entered and bitching and scratching their heads because they have lose their money.

[tk808]

This article perfectly describes what’s going on. It’s fairly long but well worth the read.

https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2017/12/06/bitcoin-bitfinex-tether-risk-crashing/

If your money is absolutely worthless to you then don’t read this. Just keep pouring money into bitcoin until the crash happens. You’ve been warned and now have no excuse. You also lose the right to come to this forum and bitch about the loss later. Every time one of you bitches that you lost all of your money I’m going to laugh at you and post this thread under your whining.

You should know better than to speculate on one piece of news article. Are there good points? yeah sure. But it all remains a conspiracy theory backed up by no evidence. Therefore, it's an opinion piece that is imagined by the reader to any extent he desires.


There is only 1 thing on this earth that can kill bitcoin, and that's bitcoin itself. A better concern for traders and investors would be the high tx fees. There's fact to be concerned about.


No one knows jack shit about ANY market, let alone bitcoin. Everyone is just a half-assed moron (myself included) with their thumb up their ass pretending to be Nostradamus. Nothing like Bitcoin has ever been seen in the history of the world, no future outcome can ever be predicted or "pattern-er-ized"

[squatter]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

These bubbles aren't exactly foreign to bitcoin folks. It's just low-supply commodity market economics playing out. There's really no question at this point whether there will be a crash. Of course there will be! There always is. The interesting part is to see how high it goes first.

It's during bear markets that the ecosystem develops and matures, and people really get to work on coding and infrastructure. It may look like a "boom and bust" but it's healthy. In fact, I don't think price discovery can really happen any other way with an asset in such limited supply.

As for Tether.... the company is suspicious but I'm not convinced that their centralized USDT and opaque banking practices are capable of keeping the market in a bullish frenzy for a year. When crypto really moves, the buying pressure usually comes from Coinbase, Bithumb or Bitflyer. Not Bitfinex or Tether.

[Empiretoken]

 For one thing, bubbles don’t do what bitcoin has done since its inception in 2009. From the past 10-years, I saw several bubbles grow and then burst, and one thing you learn is that an actual bubble rises like crazy and then totally pops. It doesn’t come right back a couple of years later and soar again to a new price 10 times greater than the previous bubble's high, which is what bitcoin has done after each one of its three or four previous “bubbles” burst.That’s not a bubble, but something else entirely.

[QuestionAuthority]

This article perfectly describes what’s going on. It’s fairly long but well worth the read.

https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2017/12/06/bitcoin-bitfinex-tether-risk-crashing/

If your money is absolutely worthless to you then don’t read this. Just keep pouring money into bitcoin until the crash happens. You’ve been warned and now have no excuse. You also lose the right to come to this forum and bitch about the loss later. Every time one of you bitches that you lost all of your money I’m going to laugh at you and post this thread under your whining.

You should know better than to speculate on one piece of news article. Are there good points? yeah sure. But it all remains a conspiracy theory backed up by no evidence. Therefore, it's an opinion piece that is imagined by the reader to any extent he desires.


There is only 1 thing on this earth that can kill bitcoin, and that's bitcoin itself. A better concern for traders and investors would be the high tx fees. There's fact to be concerned about.


No one knows jack shit about ANY market, let alone bitcoin. Everyone is just a half-assed moron (myself included) with their thumb up their ass pretending to be Nostradamus. Nothing like Bitcoin has ever been seen in the history of the world, no future outcome can ever be predicted or "pattern-er-ized"

This won’t kill bitcoin. I never said that and the article never said that. This will end up fucking over a shit ton more people that will leave bitcoin forever and talk shit about it for the rest of their lives. Why do we need to make more enemies out of former supporters? This is just a repeat of the 500,000 lost MtGox btc that made haters for life.

People should know what they are getting into and prepare for it. That’s not possible if all anyone on this forum ever does is say, “to the moon” while posting pretty pictures of trains and rockets. No one ever explains the dangers of bitcoin. They just parrot the party line of, we’re all going to be millionaires tomorrow. Well that’s not true, some of us will be broke tomorrow.

[QuestionAuthority]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

These bubbles aren't exactly foreign to bitcoin folks. It's just low-supply commodity market economics playing out. There's really no question at this point whether there will be a crash. Of course there will be! There always is. The interesting part is to see how high it goes first.

It's during bear markets that the ecosystem develops and matures, and people really get to work on coding and infrastructure. It may look like a "boom and bust" but it's healthy. In fact, I don't think price discovery can really happen any other way with an asset in such limited supply.

As for Tether.... the company is suspicious but I'm not convinced that their centralized USDT and opaque banking practices are capable of keeping the market in a bullish frenzy for a year. When crypto really moves, the buying pressure usually comes from Coinbase, Bithumb or Bitflyer. Not Bitfinex or Tether.

Read this article and tell me if you still believe this is normal (all the way through, don’t just skim through it). https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2017/12/06/bitcoin-bitfinex-tether-risk-crashing/

[Tuare aget]

“The issue is that, like any investment vehicle, the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (forms of digital money) is subject to manipulation by large entities that have a stake in it, especially large-scale traders. The cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex is the main actor to think about here.


http://fortune.com/2017/11/29/bitcoin-price-11000-nasdaq-cme-futures/

Yes you are correct because all investment is going up and down from the speculation amd manipultion.
However i will think so much about this because this issue is issued from long time ago but bitcoin still exist and growing.

[Cryptoshops]

And those who are bitching are newcomers in the market thinking that they can make money in crypto by just pouring their cash into the ecosystem. And then goes to the forum asking for advise because in the first place they didn't know what they entered and bitching and scratching their heads because they have lose their money.

I always thought Bitcoin was meant to be free of Fiat money "decentralized"  as we can see its actually being manipulated by Fiat money. Bitcoin was supposed to be a completly different way to pay for things but thanks to peoples greed they have turned Bitcoin into a trading coin and are chasing high profile mechants away like Steam and Microsoft with all its problems with the high transaction fees and delayed network problems plus its volatility caused by greedy people wanting to make a high quick profit for real money. Bitcoin will implode if they do not sort out the problems and quickly.

[QuestionAuthority]

And those who are bitching are newcomers in the market thinking that they can make money in crypto by just pouring their cash into the ecosystem. And then goes to the forum asking for advise because in the first place they didn't know what they entered and bitching and scratching their heads because they have lose their money.

I always thought Bitcoin was meant to be free of Fiat money "decentralized"  as we can see its actually being manipulated by Fiat money. Bitcoin was supposed to be a completly different way to pay for things but thanks to peoples greed they have turned Bitcoin into a trading coin and are chasing high profile mechants away like Steam and Microsoft with all its problems with the high transaction fees and delayed network problems plus its volatility caused by greedy people wanting to make a high quick profit for real money. Bitcoin will implode if they do not sort out the problems and quickly.

I think you have a good grasp of the situation. Bitcoin can be great someday but we need to get all of the powerful sharks and conmen out of it first.

[franky1]

a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

[QuestionAuthority]

a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

Thanks for the support. It shocks and amazes me that no one is bright enough to see this rise in price as unnatural. Can anyone name any other commodity or currency that has increased 1,900% in less than a year? If gold went up 1,900% from its current price that would mean an ounce of gold would be worth about $25,000. Does anyone ever see that happening in less than a year?

[icanscript]

a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

Thanks for the support. It shocks and amazes me that no one is bright enough to see this rise in price as unnatural. Can anyone name any other commodity or currency that has increased 1,900% in less than a year? If gold went up 1,900% from its current price that would mean an ounce of gold would be worth about $25,000. Does anyone ever see that happening in less than a year?

High interest rates and high bitcoin volatility are associated with the high speed of cryptology, information spreading through the networks at the speed of light. It is not possible to move gold with such speeds.

[QuestionAuthority]

a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

Thanks for the support. It shocks and amazes me that no one is bright enough to see this rise in price as unnatural. Can anyone name any other commodity or currency that has increased 1,900% in less than a year? If gold went up 1,900% from its current price that would mean an ounce of gold would be worth about $25,000. Does anyone ever see that happening in less than a year?

High interest rates and high bitcoin volatility are associated with the high speed of cryptology, information spreading through the networks at the speed of light. It is not possible to move gold with such speeds.

Really? I’ve had a transaction stuck for 4 days on your light speed network. LOL
I’ve had exchanges take routinely over two weeks to get me my cash from a small coin sale. Your information superhighway has some very large Los Angeles style traffic jams going on every day.

India buys an average of 800 tonnes of gold every year and its total jewelry market is worth more than $20 billion. The United States of America is the world’s third highest buyer of gold. In 2007, it purchased 275 tons.

There’s a gold buyer at a store not 2 miles from my house that will give you spot minus 1.25 for anything up to 500 ounces a day and he’s open 7 days a week.

[2fresh]

It might be, but I've been reading since btc was 100 that it would be a bubble.

[BTCforJoe]

I'm hoping that this bubble does burst so that we can shakeout the greedy investors that Bitcoin has currently groomed. I'm not a super early adopter of Bitcoin, but I did start gaining interest around the $100 price point. I bought my first Bitcoin at $230. And boy, was I excited! Learning about the Blockchain and the technology was something I could get behind! Using Bitcoin to top up my prepaid phone, or to order ebooks online... Those were the glory days.

I took a little break from using BTC as a currency after the price hit $500, and took the opportunity to start hodling and introducing friends and family to BTC. I said the price was steadily increasing, and that Bitcoin was going to have amazing growth in the years to come.

Nowhere did I imagine that the price would hit $20,000 just a few short years later. Of course all my friends and family were/are excited. I was excited, but ultimately, this is now the moment that I'm becoming worried. I'm noticing the types of people that are now "experts" about cryptocurrency on my social media platforms, and I'm not liking what I'm seeing. I've been slowly exiting my initial investment into other alts, but for the most part, I'm a true hodler. I'm curious to see how Bitcoin fares through this bubble. I choose not to capitalize on this growth. I want to believe that Bitcoin is a great store of value, but I'm even beginning to question my own opinions on that.

With that said, not all bubbles are bad. I feel that this bitcoin bubble bursting would be enough to shakeout all the greed, but not be detrimental enough to kill off Bitcoin. I feel like it would be a huge reset button that will put us back on track to the slow and steady growth of value, rather than the huge hills and valleys we've been seeing. But maybe that's all a pipe dream.

Either way, thanks for all of the articles, @QuestionAuthority. I'm soaking up as much opinion as I can, and it's really (subjectively) opening up my eyes to what's really going on in the Bitcoin world.

[LoyceV]

I think what he means is Bitcoin is rising too much too fast. It would be better for people to buy and hold for a long time and let the price rise slowly. Instead people are buying and selling fast. That will cause a crash.

I prefer to look at BitcoinAverage in log-view:

This graph has been going up steeper than average lately, just like it did before the previous drops. If there is anything you can predict from this graph, I think it's that Bitcoin will go up long-term.

A month ago "everybody" was predicting Bitcoin to go up to $50k, $500k or $1M! Basically, when it goes up, all "predictions" are that it will go up more, and when it goes down a bit, "everybody" says it's a bubble that will crash. And the beauty of all this: they'll all be right at some point in the future! How easy is it to say: "I told you so" if everybody is right at some point? Mark my words, I'll tell you "I told you so" later
It's just in Bitcoin's nature to go up and down a lot, and the shitload of altcoins is accelerating this. High fees, miner's electricity bills, exchanges' commission and altcoins/ICOs are all draining money from the Bitcoin ecosystem, and yet, it's worth more than it ever was a month ago!

Of course Bitcoin has been rising too fast, and altcoins even faster. There's not much logic in going up 100x or more in a year.
Who here even knows most ICOs are actually ITOs? They don't even have Coins, they sell Tokens! Altcoins are created with only one goal: earn money for the creator, and Ethereum is the one that enables many other Tokens to be sold at high prices, meanwhile increasing it's own price.

I'm hoping that this bubble does burst so that we can shakeout the greedy investors that Bitcoin has currently groomed.

You'll never get rid of "greedy investors". I don't think many people joined Bitcoin (or this forum) for any other reason than trying to earn some money.

Using Bitcoin to top up my prepaid phone, or to order ebooks online... Those were the glory days.

It pains me to see this isn't possible anymore due to high fees, and I don't believe this can't damage Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to be electronic cash, but it's too expensive to use.

took the opportunity to start hodling and introducing friends and family to BTC

I know several people who are interested in Bitcoin, and would like to buy some, but I can't in good conscience recommend doing so at current fees.
Example: the most popular site to buy/sell Bitcoin in the Netherlands (Bitonic) sells a minimum of 0.01642589BTC for 200 euro. If you would want to sell it again (0.01562589BTC after fee), you get 170.58 euro back. That's an instant 30 euro loss (the site takes a few percent only, the rest is caused by fees). I hate it, but because of this I can't recommend buying small amounts of Bitcoin now.
I can imagine many people keep their coins on an exchange. This saves fees, but you risk everything to do so.

[HeroicZ1]

It might be, but I've been reading since btc was 100 that it would be a bubble.

Maybe it's because the bubble is yet to burst? I dunno, because I'm also not convinced by what I'm seeing with the slow transactions (taking weeks for some), and expensive fees just to send a few coins?!

[QuestionAuthority]

I think everyone here is basically seeing what I’m seeing. Bitcoin could have had a great future. It is an earth shattering new technology with the potential to usher in great changes in the world of finance. It could be used to help the disenfranchised, unbanked, and helpless people that are currently abused by wealthy power hungry monsters. It could be used to level the playing field of government spending allowing every citizen of the world to see and track where governments are wasting their money. It could be used to pull money away from the financial robber barons on Wall Street and return its control to the people. Bitcoin could eventually have a real economy surrounding it where people sell products for btc and live on their profit using only btc.

Unfortunately, all of the above is fantasy. Will the price keep climbing? Of course, because the main people benefitting from the unnatural manipulated rise in price are the robber barons. These charlatans are keeping bitcoin away from the people that need it the most. Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

[joebrook]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

Although I think there is a lot of bubble in the cryptocurrency market today, we can still make money from it, right?

That's what the investors care about, making money but it seems that this publication is very old and actually dated during the first week of December. In spite of what he is saying, i really still doubt that bitcoin is indeed a bubble. People always say that but without any proper explanation.

[BTCforJoe]

I think everyone here is basically seeing what I’m seeing. Bitcoin could have had a great future. It is an earth shattering new technology with the potential to usher in great changes in the world of finance. It could be used to help the disenfranchised, unbanked, and helpless people that are currently abused by wealthy power hungry monsters. It could be used to level the playing field of government spending allowing every citizen of the world to see and track where governments are wasting their money. It could be used to pull money away from the financial robber barons on Wall Street and return its control to the people. Bitcoin could eventually have a real economy surrounding it where people sell products for btc and live on their profit using only btc.

Unfortunately, all of the above is fantasy. Will the price keep climbing? Of course, because the main people benefitting from the unnatural manipulated rise in price are the robber barons. These charlatans are keeping bitcoin away from the people that need it the most. Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

Call me naive or overly-optimistic, but I see Bitcoin now purely as a store of value. Micro transactions for every day purposes are out of the question, but I'm holding on to the hope that Bitcoin could fare through all the current bullshit to come to be known as the the value behind all cryptocurrency. In other words, the hodler's commodity. But for it to become this way, the value and volatility will be at risk.

I don't know, man. I'm starting to see why so many early adopters are so discouraged with how Bitcoin has become what it has, and I'm constantly jumping on and off the "Bitcoin is dead" bandwagon.

-snip-

I know several people who are interested in Bitcoin, and would like to buy some, but I can't in good conscience recommend doing so at current fees.

I always preface any Bitcoin conversation that I have with friends by saying that I am not a financial analyst. I am not directing or advising my friends what to do with their money, but I do tell them about my personal experiences with Bitcoin. I do tell them that there has been a time when it was great for day-to-day transactions, but that currently I view it as a store of value and that I'm hodling. I know that a lot of them are fueled by the grandeur of future profits on their investments, but I take the time to explain to them why Bitcoin is so important nowadays, and how the Blockchain technology is a huge advancement towards our future. I dunno, I guess I like to think that I'm a responsible advocate of Bitcoin, but I know that people like us are rare in this explosive market.

[QuestionAuthority]

There’s nothing wrong with being an optimist. I used to be like that. Six years of watching it get worse and further from the dream I thought it was has kind of warn me down. Next time you’re talking to someone about bitcoin, ask them if they knew bitcoin was supposed to be a system that allows people to send money to each other without the need for a trusted third-party. Then ask them if they know what that means.

[squatter]

Really? I’ve had a transaction stuck for 4 days on your light speed network. LOL
I’ve had exchanges take routinely over two weeks to get me my cash from a small coin sale. Your information superhighway has some very large Los Angeles style traffic jams going on every day.

No doubt about that. But I'm not too concerned. Anyone touting the Bitcoin protocol as some perfect, instant or cheap/free system is simply wrong. That's the cost of decentralization; it's a simple decentralized messaging protocol. Every message comes with storage, bandwidth and propagation costs.

Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

I hear you. This was, however, a byproduct of the ecosystem that Satoshi foresaw as well. Mainstream adoption of a deflationary money necessarily means the cost to adopt it will increase, especially in the context of decentralization, where every transaction adds costs to the system.

There are systems that can interact with Bitcoin's protocol that can significantly lower the costs and delays associated with it -- with potential security and privacy trade-offs. Lightning and sidechains are both a reality now. It'll be interesting to see how their adoption affects on-chain traffic, especially since interacting with them requires on-chain transactions.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but I won't lie. I am genuinely disturbed by the greed and cult-like behavior we see in this "community." I think that we can build a better future with decentralized tools like cryptocurrency, but I'm almost looking forward to a bear market where the price doesn't dominate all discussions.