Quote from: mondrany on January 27, 2018, 01:52:09 AM

How will it start changing the financial system during 2018?

I don't think that it will change that much in financial system in the run of 2018. Bitcoin is continuing in its development and it won't be that reliable yet to part of the today's financial system. There are some certain things that needs to be considered to avoid having conflict and before the Bitcoin became a another tunnel to transport finances.

1. Speed - regardless of how much the miner's fee is, there are still conflict in transactions such as unconfirmed transaction or lost transactions. See here: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions. Imagine if your favorite company just collapsed suddenly because the transactions went unconfirmed in the traffic.

2. Price - as what everyone knows that Bitcoin price is really unstable. Let's put it in an example that you're having a sole proprietorship business and you're accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. 60% of your sales were paid in Bitcoin. What if the crashed happened in that period? You could have burden a lot of losses.

3. People - because human resources are the most important part of management, you need people that also uses Bitcoin. If your company is using Bitcoin as the salary for your employees just like what is happening now in Japan, everyone is really obliged to get an hardware wallet or an online wallet and you could just give it as a benefits for employees. The main concern here is can they trust the Bitcoin and the government banning bitcoin. People tend to follow what government inputted in the law. You can't spend all of your time using VPN just to make the Bitcoin usable. You're not just risking people, but you're also risking yourself and your company. The trust level of people in the Bitcoin is what makes it a bit of a conflict.

4. Economy - not all countries can adopt to technologies especially in microeconomics where specific rural areas in a country will still use physical money for all they wanted and they will deny technology for all they want. It might promote the poverty even more because if the physical money gets replaced by cryptocurrency, everyone is forced to use the internet for the wallet or buy hardware wallet.

5. Security - everyone has the option of the wallet they wanted to use. Online wallet, hardware wallet, paper wallet etc. Especially when it comes to online wallet, it is always the easier option to put your money in it. But since the it is not in your direct control, it is vulnerable in hacks. A site always has the probability of getting hacked, maybe because of lack of maintenance or updates in the page source code. This could solved by using simply buying hardware wallet, but as what I've said previously, it will be like everyone is forced to buy hardware wallet in it. Government support could be the way to solve this

Quote from: mondrany on January 27, 2018, 01:52:09 AM

Are more countries going to ban it?

I'm gonna be pessimistic that more countries will ban it, instead more countries/government will put on a support for it The misconception in Bitcoin is what causes it to get banned. They can be right that it has risks in investment, A LOT OF RISKS, but the risks in investments is it because the stages of growth of Bitcoin.

Quote from: mondrany on January 27, 2018, 01:52:09 AM

What new uses/applications will it provide?

Nothing much from my opinion from what I've stated above.

Quote from: mondrany on January 27, 2018, 01:52:09 AM

Lower/higher transaction fees?

Lightning network could manage all these high transaction fees. It could answer the problem in speed and miner's fee. It depends on how the proposal and development goes. It should focus more in speed because it won't stand out as part of financial system if it will go snail-slow in transaction. It needs to be faster than banks sending/receiving transaction.