Zcash is a way of sending and storing value privately. If you are asking if it is a good way to launder money then I'm sure there would be some more hoops to jump through before it's 'clean'.

Also, there are many legitimate reasons to want your transactions to be private other than to simply launder illegal gains.

I suppose legitimate is subjective in a way, but I can't really think of many reasons that don't involve avoiding detection from governments.

It would be easier to dive in for the long haul if it's value was a little more clear. What are some of the many "legitimate" reasons other than laundering money, or moving money gained though various types of trafficking that you're referring to?

Only if the gifts are from the same person, if from different people you would not have to. There might be some limit but for example parents can pass their married kids $56k per year if they want tax free (each parent gives $14k to both their kid and their kid's spouse), or $28k to a child who is still single.

if someone gifts you 2 million you need to pay taxes on it, you can claim it as a gift and pay your taxes. Personally, I would be happy to do so.

There are plenty of reasons you don’t want everyone knowing your account balances...

Oh hi there 5 figures

https://twitter.com/BitcoinTotalBot

I think the way sellers on the black market currently convert Bitcoin to cash is by meeting somebody in person who gives them cash and they send the person Bitcoin. The markup is something like 20%. Should be able to do the same with Zcash so there wouldn't be any paper trail.

Are you questioning the value of fungibility in a currency?

A shovel has 0 value to me. An overweight girl has 0 reproductive value to me, you can talk about her "intrinsic" value as a human being and how her character is great.

Stock price is speculation on the future value of the company. Speculation on Bitcoin is speculation on it's utility in different areas.

Greed and fomo are human emotions and are anywhere humans are. In some areas they are stronger than in others. But it's not a unique feature of Bitcoin.
It's great if people's emotions help to grow the most amazing technology at least of a decade.

There is only one reason people buy assets: Hoping they gain in value. Ignore charity, but i'm stating the obvious. Yet some people feel they have to be "bitcoin, greeeeeed, omg"

governments will target coins with features that enhance secrecy. In the near term coins with these features should grow. but if a judges warrant is useless because the information to be gained wont yield anything then the'll get banned. on a 2 year horizon they could be a great investment, but they are ultimately doomed.

They may survive to some degree, but its a pretty big setback when exchanges, merchants and wallet providers have to cut ties with these coins, to save the legitimate side of their business.

I believe this is incorrect. The receiver does not pay tax ever. The gift tax is assessed on the giver.

Or some combo of both. Yes, it doesn't "create" value. Agree. So what? The Euro doesn't create value, yet speculators bet for or against it.
Imagine you have a small country, but with the most intelligent and powerful people whose population grows daily by 20% due to some genetic miracle... would you speculate in their currency and sell your african jungle money or perhaps even some of your USD?
Does that new super-human-state currency create any value? No. Does it make many people rich speculating on its rise? ...

The main quality/utility of Bitcoin is the censorship resistance and how cheap transactions (hopefully will be again lol). That's a huge value (to most people) if you understand that cash is dying and this gives governments and banks a crazy amount of control over your whole life.

Many people seem to disagree with you about RE/stocks being the only store of value. Some hold gold. Some hold art. And some will hold cryptos.

You might be right in 5 years, but i have mentioned before, it's like me saying your grandma will die...every year i will be a bit more likely to be right.

So today i learned that Venture capital is not driven mainly by greed. And if you think emotion plays no role, what do you think most real estate investors are when they buy their cute little nest to feel homey? Or stock buyers. I'm sure they're all emotionless mathematical machines.

Most people buying bitcoin buy it hoping the price gets higher. No ****!!! Everybody knows this. People buy stocks and houses hoping the price goes up. Man, did you just discover how the world works and feel the need to let everybody else know?

Many people buying bitcoin are stupid, because most people are stupid. Not because Bitcoin, houses or stocks are stupid .

I'll give you as much as to agree the price has more volatility because the market is even more emotional.
Thanks for stating the obvious.

So what is your point? What are you trying to say? What is your unique perspective? Your long post could be summarized as "the sky is blue".

Let your ratio be 80-20 or 20-80, whatever. How does it matter?

There is a difference between buying an asset because it will increase in value because the underlying asset will produce more tangible goods (e.g. Earnings) and the asset will increase in value because someone else will be willing to pay a higher price later (greater fool theory). I'm trying to parse out how much is in each category with regard to crypto.

Edit - responding to above
It matters because most assets tend to revert to their fundamental value over time

Can you explain what you mean by "cash is dying"

The single biggest asset most people own is purchased for reasons besides hoping it gains value.

CAnt it be both? people are comfortable pumping a lot of money into housing because there is leverage and tax advantages for the capital gains. If there was a 100% capital gains tax, people would be tempted to buy only what they need and the market would tank. housing would become instantly affordable because noone wants to sink more than necessary into something with no upside

Of course it can be both, I never said it couldn't.

I think they are just wildly understaffed and didn't anticipate the extreme volume of users that would join in such a short amount of time and are having trouble keeping up with customer service issues.

I'm enhanced verified and using 2FA, which I suggest you setup if you haven't already. I've had no issues with deposits or withdrawals. Their document scanning software must suck, because most complain that they receive an error when trying to upload and be verified automatically. Upload your documents, and if verification fails set up a Bittrex Support account here and open a service request:

https://bittrex.zendesk.com/auth/v2/login/registration

Once you've submitted your request, email support letting them know the SR # (support@bittrex.zendesk.com) and asking them to escalate. Finally, it appears they respond quickly to their Twitter support channel, so I'd also hit them up here letting them know that verification isn't working for you (@BittrexExchange).

My guess is that you can get verified and make withdrawals following this process within 48 hours.

Good luck!

The fundamental value has risen exponentially since Bitcoin's creation, as it is based on a growing network. We are quite a bit above that value at the moment, but the risk with trying to wait for a correction is the same as it has been for many years, that by the time the market loses faith and the price reverses down to the fundamental value, the network has grown to where that value is higher than the current price.

Trying to time the market is tough, try it at your own peril. Otherwise, if you believe in the long term, invest an amount that you're willing to bet on a high risk investment. Dollar cost average if it brings you psychological comfort.

Bitcoin produces a good. It's called censorship resistant storage. It's more abstract, kind of like a domain name also has value, yet you can't touch it.

You gotta rethink this "fundamental value" bs. The fundamental value of everything is 0. If nobody wants your car, the fundamental value is the garbage value of the metal, which is less than 5% of the buying price. So you're right, everything reverts back to their fundamental value, which is 0.
Sometimes you even have to PAY somebody to take it and recycle. does a domain have fundamental value?

I know where you're trying to go. How much is Bitcoin hype and greater fools and how much is long-term demand (better term than "fundamental value").
Like everywhere, there are greater fools, but if you research what bitcoin CAN become and is used for, $50k/coin is more than rational and on the lower side.

So yeah, lots of hype, many fools, but the fools are right without knowing. Like they were right at other times and wrong somewhere else.


You must have not heard of the great country of Swedistan. You're a strange person if you use cash there.
Generally speaking it's a trend. More and more payments will be electronically. Fully tracked. For better or worse. Politicians eliminating high denominated paper money. Anybody $100 or Euro 500?

BTC is forking again today! Bitcoin Diamond coming soon!

there's a new gang of people calling these spinoffs "bitcoin dividends"

how many forks will we see in 2018?

look at bitcoin gold. what an insane success. they premined 100k coins. it's currently trading at $400.

hopefully these forks will shine a light on the absurdity of the bitcoin market cap claims. if you want to say bitcoin has a 130 billion market cap, you must say that BTG has a 6.4 billion market cap.

what exactly is BTG? it's bitcoin, except on graphics cards instead of miners. so they've actually downgraded the network? madness!

Good post, except for this:
Take your racism elsewhere.

The trend is definitely towards electronic payments. Mainly due to the convenience that the technology brings. There is much less resistance against the trend in countries with high trust in government and other authorities, like in the Nordic countries.

i had a legal question regarding the CME futures.

would it be illegal for a person holding a very large number of coins to short BTC on the CME futures and then sell all of their coins on the market?

Banks hate cash. Dealing in cash is a massive loss of money for them. They only use cash because they are forced to.

At this point, you should expect within 2 years that there will be an entire periodic table of bitcoin forks

Bitcoin uranium
Bitcoin helium
Bitcoin argon

Etc.

Nah, by then everyone will be on ethereum considering it does everything every new bitcoin tries to do. Faster cheaper transactions. The only thing it doesn't have is super low inflation.. YET. Once they get POS with low inflation.. GAME OVER FOLKS!

NO