In other words, if you use your Libra coin to support a political candidate or cause that runs counter to the vision of the social justice trolls in Silicon Valley, you may find your account frozen in the name of "community safety" guidelines. Or if you otherwise commit "wrongthink" on any of the Libra consortium's supported platforms.

WHAT HAPPENING?!?!?

Anyone keeping an eye on the NVT indicator? It's at 188, which is the most overbought reading... ever. Even higher than December 2017. How much more gas can possibly be in the tank for this rally??

The thing is, these articles are mostly written for average Joe sixpack. And if we're going to be perfectly honest, then most people probably should be avoiding any investment in cryptocurrencies.

At least for a few more years when (maybe) market volatility will decrease to a reasonable extent. Unless they have considerable experience with financial markets, the moment price dives, they're going to run for the door and get burned. Most people are too emotionally tied to their money and can't stomach the swings. They'll end up FOMOing in and then as soon as price drops 10%, they'll call the whole thing a scam.

Since it happened overnight for the West which is kind of unusual, my theory is that enough traders in the East were fooled by the April 1 fake news of ETF approvals that it triggered a FOMO up to 5k.

No doubt he wants to be first in line to consolidate authority over the bitcoin network, so he can then retrofit Twitter's draconian censorship policies on top of it.

You can hear many sob stories about people who "lost it all" in bitcoin, but these are the ones who bought toward the end of a bull market and rode it all the way back down. You can find individuals like this in any market... the media loves to highlight old people who (for some bizarre reason) have all their retirement money tied up in the stock market still, and then liquidate it all at the bottom of a market crash. Most people don't have the temperament to be savvy investors. And it makes sense, because as human beings, our brains are wired to follow the herd. If a market is rising, we pile in. If it's falling or flat, we rush for the exit. Sometimes that's for good reason. But this isn't some kind of silly penny stock. Blockchain technology has the potential to change the world. Anyone who invests a modest amount of money now may be rich in a couple more years. Very exciting times for crypto.

I just want to say about Warren Buffet... the guy is 88-years-old and is still out there buying newspapers and railroads. He's a dinosaur. You think he would know (or even understand) the first thing about bitcoins or cryptocurrency??

He doesn't even know how to use a computer ffs and has people on his payroll to do all of that for him. People really need to stop taking such high esteem in everything he says about it. We might as well get Kim Kardashian's thoughts about astrophysics while we're at it.

LOL. I like it. Some crypto people really are funny. I mean, I totally agree that we do need to take security seriously. But I think far more often, people end up locking THEMSELVES out of their funds rather than thwarting these mastermind three letter agency level subversive attacks on their personal bitcoin stashes that they seem to envision in their paranoid fantasies. Any security professional can tell you that people are the weakest links in any security protocol. And that can include ourselves!

I don't think this was an "inside job". Sure, it's possible. Anything is. But it's much more likely IMO that several people simply knew that he was big in crypto trading and that he kept a large stash at home. Like I said earlier in this thread, people like drug dealers are victims to these type of robberies all the time. If people know you keep a large sum of cash (or digital cash) at home, you can potentially be a victim. So it's best for people to use common sense, keep their coins safe on a hardware wallet (but don't make it so complex that you forget how to access it) and more or less keep quiet about it!

Well, I would revise that slightly to perhaps permit knowledge with a significant other, or in the absence of that, another family member you can trust well. But make sure that they're smart about it and that they're not spreading information to other people. Yes, maybe that sounds too cautious. But we all need to be careful with our safety. And I say that because bitcoin is essentially digital cash. It is well known to law enforcement that people who keep large sums of cash at home are common targets of theft. For instance, people who sell drugs or run home casinos put themselves at high risk. Also people who recently won a state lottery.

I think crimes like this against BTC owners will increase in the coming years, unfortunately. Be safe.

It's best not to discuss bitcoin with ANYONE. Even family. And that's not because I'm saying you can't trust them personally, but they might talk to their friends or coworkers about how their son or their nephew just made a fortune in bitcoin. It might get the wrong kind of people thinking.

And it's one of the issues that gives me pause for thought about a future world where everyone is "their own bank". Will we all need to live in fear of thugs breaking into our homes and demanding our hardware wallets and PIN codes?

We've already had at least four dramatic bull markets in bitcoin history, and it certainly didn't scare traders off each time. On the contrary, the dramatic and rapid increase in bitcoin price has attracted more investors each time. When the next rally comes around (if indeed, it happens at all) things will get crazy, guaranteed.

A lottery ticket is something a person buys on a whim on the fanciful hope that he or she can overcome astronomical odds to receive a sudden windfall of treasure and wealth. The fact that Rogoff would even make a casual association between a lottery ticket and bitcoin reveals what a dunderheaded simpleton he is. What a joke!

With each passing year, the crypto market is expanding and the utility of bitcoin and blockchain technology are becoming more and more self-evident. And this is really just the beginning still. By Rogoff's logic, we might as well say that investing in publicly traded stocks is a "lottery ticket" because, you know, a company can go bankrupt and leave the investors high and dry. It could happen, but if you've educated yourself, then you'll known whether it's a reasonable risk/reward or not.

Well, I'll say just two things here.

One, there actually are plenty of billionaires investing in crypto. Not necessarily in the currency itself, but there are huge sums of capital going into projects related to the crypto market. Because savvy investors realize that blockchain technology has tremendous potential, and bitcoin growth has gone hand-in-hand with that growth. There is no reason at present to believe that it will not continue to be the case for several years to come.

And with each bullish cycle, we see millions of new accounts created across exchanges. The current infrastructure is struggling majorly to keep up, hence why there is still so much investment flooding into this market. So factor this in with the block reward being reduced to 6.25 next year, and there is a recipe for tremendous growth. For anyone who understands this market, I think you'd be crazy NOT to believe that we're headed for $1 million a coin and more.

Anyone else feel like we haven't really hit the despair stage yet? Once we see HODLers giving up and selling at a loss, and the true believers being mocked and ridiculed, I think we'll be there and truly have our bottom. Will it take $800 BTC to get there? Probably not, but I do expect we'll have at least one more steep drop followed by months of sideways movement before we're really out of this bear market.

So what are the top exchanges these days for anyone in the US who would like to withdrawal at least some of their crypto assets to fiat at some point?

Nothing is guaranteed, but it is high possibility that in few years time, people will gasp in awe at the wise man who owns one full bitcoin. This year 2019 may be last opportunity for average man to buy full bitcoin with his own resources.

Hope everyone bought cheap coins while they lasted!

WHAT HAPPENING!!??

I actually dreamed last night that bitcoin fell to $6 USD, and then to $2 USD. Pretty scary. So what did I do? Bought more! In reality, I think it'd be finished at that point. Hopefully not a vision of things to come...