They probably will. It's a fraction of the balances people had on there, but it's still a lot of coins. My very rough estimate is that about 50 % will be sold within the first months after distribution.

There is some legal issue with distributing them as coins. Basically giving the liquidator a bitcoin address to transfer to is not allowed. It needs to be transferred to something linked to a person with proper KYC documentation, The suggestion is to transfer the coins to validated accounts on an exchange but the judge has not signed off on that yet.

Been lurking this thread for a long time, just woke up early in the morning and have the urge to write down my thoughts on what I think about btc.

Pros:
1. Decentralized - anti fraud - no single entity can inflate by printing more money. More than 50% of the world's countries have extreme corruption at the highest levels of government. These corrupt officials and their families and friends can greatly benefit at the expense of the rest of the citizens of their country. Before printing more of their currency, they can sell all they have for gold or USD. Print a bunch of their currency, thus decreasing the value. Then buy back their currency with gold/USD. Profit. Where did the value of the profit come from? Everyone else. All their citizens holding their currency now has less purchasing power! Fiat controlled by corrupt government is the grandest scam of all scams. Bitcoin solves this problem for the billions of people living under these corrupt governments.

Risk is that Bitcoin can be banned by these same governments. If banned, Bitcoin can be useless as a high frequency medium of exchange. But its use as a store of value is still strong. Much like hiding gold under your bed but with much better privacy and security from seizure.

2. International transfers - today it takes 3 to 6 business days to do an international wire transfers costing $50 in fees. And the user experience is horrendous, both sender and receiver needs to have bank accounts that can accept wires. More than 50% of world's population don't have bank accounts. You have to fill out a complicated form with Swift or iban numbers. You're never sure if the info is correct because different countries have different standards on account and routing numbers. Most banks, you have to go into the bank to initiate a wire.

With Bitcoin, anyone can set up a wallet in minutes if you don't already have one. Fees are minimal. And transaction time is from minutes to hours, not days.

3. Censorship free - open access for everyone. A couple key properties of money is for it to represent value and allow owners of it to easily and frictionlessly transfer that value to others. Why do we need banks as middle men who require users to have national IDs and monitor users every move, and sometimes refuse or block transactions? And on top of this, many banks charge fees to keep an account that is under $1000 or $2000. Why tolerate such nonsense?? More than 50% of the world's population don't have bank accounts for these reasons. They use cash, which exclude them from many services. Their spending and trustworthiness is not tracked so they cannot get loans to better their lives. Essentially, potential value of more than 50% of the world's population is being locked by all the friction and censorship of banks. Bitcoin and surrounding ecosystem that hopefully will be built on top of it can unlock this value and usher in a tidal wave of value for the world.

Cons:
1. Fingers getting tired of typing on mobile.
Short answer is current adoption. But this is a temporary issue. Those who have used Bitcoin for a real use case (I'm not talking about speculators) is hooked and will continue to use. This number only grows.

2. Ability to handle large number of transactions. This is being solved by many different solutions. Of course we can go into alt coins as well and discuss more nuanced pros and cons of Bitcoin vs alt coins but again fingers are tired.

3. User experience could be even better. Surrounding experiences to the core transaction such as notifications, groupings ("accounts"), insurance, beneficiaries, etc. can be much improved. This is being solved by many startups.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

Will be fun to hear all the guys who made bold predictions about it hitting 25k-50k in 2018 justify the price despite how well things went from a regulatory perspective.

I'm not being antagonistic, just curious, what were some good things that happened from a regulatory perspective? I'm probably out of the loop since I haven't heard any big news, or is the lack of regulations in itself good news?

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

Seeing as no regulation is the best case scenario the fact that china is the only major economy to take a strong position against is a pretty big win i'd say. Maybe not for someone who thought it was a near lock that every world government responded favorably, but it's hard to look it at it as if the result on the whole has been worse than expected.

Ah ok, makes sense. Lots of folks are hopeful and excited at the prospect of an ETF sometime, if I remember correctly, in March 2019. I wonder if it's actually going to pump up the price. It is another channel that could get additional types of investors who were wary to manage their own coins but wanted to diversify their portfolio by having some cryptos. These investors don't necessarily care about the vision or principles of cryptos.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

Don't worry. Bitcoin prat Tom Lee recently adjusted his year end prediction. It's not going to go up 5x, it's only going to go up 3x in the next 6 weeks!

Tom Lee Has Slashed His Price Target on Bitcoin from $25,000 to $15,000

everything relies on a third party...the foundations that create and manage these things are third parties (fairly dysfunctional ones at that), we need banks and credit card companies (3rd parties) to move money onto exchanges (more 3rd parties) to convert our money to something representing a digital asset...but but but you aren't even on the blockchain yet...you are just using a custodial account where the for-profit exchange acts like a bank (without safeguarding regulations). when you finally move it to the wallet (provided by 3rd party) the transaction is facilitated by miners (3rd parties and fairly centralized). we're putting our trust in a few parties here

a peg is simple...it just matches circulating currency with whats in USD reserves held by reserve providers, and there could be many reserve providers for a single currency peg blockchain and they could compete for the service not much differently than miners do today. its just another group that needs to be rewarded for their services.

people seem to think a peg is more active than it is...it should not be. you dont change circulation based on current price...you make sure circulation equals whats on reserve, thats it. If there is a discrepancy...the arbitrageurs jump in to make an instant profit and return the coin to parity. anytime you see a peg 5% below its value. just buy it, it will get back to parity

there was a lot of regulatory tightening on the money supply.
- credit card companies stopped servicing
- know your customer killed off a lot of accounts / signups
- ICOS died
- people had to pay taxes
- people got banned from trading securities coins

so they didnt kill crypto outright with silly regulations these things really reduced the money flowing into the ecosystem

isnt mcafee supposed to eat his dick

spotted dick has a whole different meaning in that meal

Hi guys. I said I'd be back when bitcoin hits below $5000.

Remember, bitcoin's value doesn't change, it's the value of everything else priced in bitcoin that goes up.

This is brutal. I am REKT!

It’s not about the dollar value guys, it’s all about the technology and Satoshi’s vision.

Switzerland approved the first bitcoin ETF. Last year news like that would have caused a big spike in the price. This year it hasn't done anything yet.

This and NVDA hurt. I'm gonna keep fun money in there but I just do not see a bullish case at all atm unless I'm missing something--nobody's buying and many of the arguments for people were saying really aren't holding up.

Please show me I'm wrong someone.

Once Chinese New Year is over, this will shake itself out.

This is exactly what Tether does. Supposedly, they can't completely open and audited, because the problem is the same as with every digital currency before Bitcoin, the countries who's currency they make ties to shut them down. This is the kind of censorship Bitcoin is resistant to. I'm not saying it won't happen, but all it will do is replace Tether, it changes nothing about Bitcoin.

under $5k, gg?

According to coinmarketcap, the entire crypto market cap is down 80% from its peak. If you only HODLed bitcoin you would've been able to enjoy the stability a mere 75% drop.

this is good for bitcoin

well, on the bright side, it's still at $4,800

I was introduced to Bitcoin (and mining) by the Bangkok poker crew back when it was 45$. My impression is that a lot of poker players got in early enough and it was good timing after BF and people looking for other opportunities.

As much I continue to not believe in crypto, it is pointless to gloat and rub salt in people's wounds. I would rather hear something constructive, how to profit going forward. For example, is there a way to repurpose asic miners?

firm support around $0