You state that dollars can be "used". How exactly can you "use" a dollar? If I walk to the local cafe and buy a cup of coffee, is my dollar consumed and used up, like a piece of bread? No, it was an exchange, or a "transfer", as you call it, and in exchange I got my cup of coffee. If a big investment bank is collecting billions of dollars each year, are they "using" the dollars, or only facilitating the "transfer" of many dollars into their accounts?

Frankly speaking, if I can use my bitcoins to purchase goods and services (which I CAN do, albeit a currently limited selection, limited to those willing to do business with bitcoins and/or exchange services for bitcoins), then I would consider this "using" bitcoins as much as you can "use" a dollar, by your own definition.

Furthermore, "new investors" are certainly NOT the only way to obtain bitcoins. You can mine bitcoins, and sure, you pay more in electricity than what you obtain, but you are still obtaining NEW bitcoin that is NOT from new investors. Thereby defeating your definition. I think there are several large holes in your arguments. Still, thank you for provoking the discussion  

We hit $2400 just a few days ago followed by a sharp rebound to $4000+. As you say 2019 will be an interesting year.

I think we will see a high price sometime in the year, whether or not Ripple gets axed, as ultimately Ripple is not wholly, in and by itself Bitcoin, and does not necessarily reflect the future of Bitcoin (though such an event would likely have sharp short-term price implications on Bitcoin).

In the long run, Bitcoin is Bitcoin, no matter what Ripple does, so I think we will always see very strong buy pressure in the low price range. 2019 seems to be the year of 'high highs and low lows', so that's what I would expect to see, some of everything. Probably a trying time for the patience of investors!

It's a really striking graph, I never knew that there was a steady increase over the years when you check the September price. I was curious if this was just a "September phenomenon", so I checked the historical data from coinmarketcap.com (available here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data/) and took instead the May price. Here are my results:

https://i.imgur.com/iA4FZU5.png
As you can see, it shows basically the same trend as your image: Bitcoin price seems to be growing steadily. However, there is another angle worth considering, let's check out the Volume for the same period:

https://i.imgur.com/YG5fhK9.png
So basically bitcoin volume (and hype, media, mainstream awareness, etc.) EXPLODED in the past 2 years. Therefore it's very possible that the last 2 bars of Price data, which really give the "oomph" to the price increase trend, are heavily influenced and/or possibly manipulated as a side-effect of bitcoin exploding in popularity only recently. Either way, thank you for the interesting data and for giving me the idea to investigate from another angle.

Edit: As for the next 12 months, I don't think the mass hype is over, so I think we will likely see a period where the price continues to grow, supporting your initial chart; however, since we had the massive downturn, we will likely also see a remarkable low this year (indeed we had one only a few days ago of $2,400) as the various market forces attempt to determine the real value of Bitcoin without as much hype as last year. In other words, I think we will see a 'high high' and a 'low low' in the same year.

Of course there are many factors to this question. Do you already have mining equipment (e.g. a high-end GPU or a multi-GPU rig)? Have you ever mined before? It seems that Ethereum mining, for example, becomes more and more difficult, and GPU prices are still at ridiculous levels, so I personally don't think now is a good time to buy a GPU for mining. If you already have one, with the current low prices, mining difficulties can drop quite far, so you can pick up more coins than you usually could by mining, and then hold them for a price-rise later on. Of course your electricity cost comes into this too, but you need to assess your whole situation to be able to answer this question.

From what I have seen, coins often plummet after being listed on an exchange, this is a great opportunity for a few reasons:

• If you hold the coin and want to totally cash out, selling immediately will often give you the best short-term price, by a significant margin.
• If you want to hold the coin for the future, you could sell half or more of your holdings and buy back at a much cheaper price a few days later.

I don't think it's wise to simply hold through the mass-selling period, it can be a great opportunity. Or if you think the project has a decent future, you can pick up more coins/invest in the coin when it hits rock-bottom after the first days/weeks.

Looking at the bitcoin price chart, I do not agree with your observation. It's true that shortly before the chinese new year (2018), Bitcoin was enjoying a super-high price (arguable, considering the crazy high transaction fees, but that's another story); however one year prior, Bitcoin wasn't doing anything special around the chinese new year at all, in fact it wasn't until several months afterward that the price began to really climb, and this was probably due to factors that had nothing at all to do with the chinese new year. In other words, you may as well pick an arbitrary date that you saw the price rise in one year, and see if it repeats the next.. in the meantime, consider that the opposite of your prediction could also materialise, and don't bet all your eggs on a potential price rise that may never happen.. as always, you take your own risks and this is just supposition, but I feel that the evidence does not support your theory in this case.

Sure, BTC could always go up or down, and if you believe in the value and strength of BTC as a long-term thing then you would probably be well-served by holding it for the long-term, and thus avoid the "rollercoaster rides" of late (super strong price moves in very short time periods), but that is not easy, in my opinion. On the other hand, the biggest holders of BTC could probably keep prices low for a time to try to create panic selling of coins. In these cases, if BTC holds in the long-term, then the panic selling will only be a short-term thing and you could possibly pick up cheap coins. On the other hand, if BTC is currently overvalued (meaning that inherently, without the need of assistance, the price would be significantly lower than it is now) then perhaps one could sell a small portion at say, $8000 and be satisfied with that decision if the price drops in the coming times.

Ultimately, there are many factors in play, and I would guess that the safest move is to account for either possibility, i.e. a large rise in the long-term, or a price drop and staying low, closer to the "true value" of BTC (this is just a theory). Plenty of information and data to search through to keep one busy for quite a while in this area.

Interesting food for thought, good question. Things have value because people say they do. Things are worth $X because someone is willing to pay $X for it.. the same is true for Bitcoin (price manipulation aside). However, I don't think you should be so hasty to go "all-in" on Bitcoin and think that nothing could or will ever surpass it. Bitcoin sparked the digital cryptocurrency interest and attention worldwide, and has remained arguably king ever since, but that doesn't mean it can never or will never be surpassed. Time will tell. In the meantime, take your own risks of course, and consider the possibility of "backing multiple horses", perhaps? That way if Bitcoin gets surpassed in the near-to-mid future, great, you accounted for the possibility; if not, great, you have enough Bitcoin to be satisfied with that decision as well.

Wow, that looks extremely blatant. Having a look in the thread there appears to be more disgruntled users than yourself. I simply wanted to thank you for bringing this to attention as it encourages me to use proper diligence (as much as is possible) when participating in bounty campaigns in the future, although I was (fortunately) not a part of this one. Surely others will be encouraged similarly. Even benign bounty campaigns are not immune from cheaters..

A temporary drop in value does not accurately reflect the long-term value of a project. In fact, it is necessary to wait to see if the project holds value long-term, that's why it's called "long-term"! The first moments after being added to an exchange are usually periods of extreme volatility, though maybe it's also a great opportunity as a coin-holder - you can sell your coins and buy them back for cheaper, for example. Trading always carries risks, but the extreme volatility is surely a sight to behold. If the project is a valuable project, then long-term its true value will always show. Nothing to worry about when it comes to short-term drops. But the problem with that is, it is not easy to wait through such tumultuous times!

As with every technology, the important thing is how it is used. Regardless of anything, we need to develop an awareness of how we feel (not how we think we feel, or what we think we should feel), and what our bodies are comfortable with, and the point at which they become uncomfortable.

Being aware of these sensations, as well as slowly learning which to ignore, will help us to use technology and minimise the harmful effects.

Till this point in my reading in the crypto world, I had never even been exposed to the idea (nor did it occur to me) that hardware wallets were not as safe as they seemed. Thanks AGD for sharing this with a wider audience, was a fascinating read. At the very least, it is very good food-for-thought. 

Even if the big coins have had big dips in recent days, they have also had bounces, meaning that there are still strong buyers who bought the price up to fair levels. Have a look at for example the BTC and ETH charts to see this. Furthermore, even if these big coins are down this month or whatever, there are many altcoins that continue to perform well with respect to other altcoins. Perhaps you could look into the altcoin markets to see what I'm talking about. In other words, sometimes when one coin falls, this causes other coins that are traded with it to go up..

Speaking of reading the chart, I just had a look at it. And you seem to be talking about the ETH/USD chart, not BTC, so that's the one I looked at. Scroll out a bit and observe the following pattern: When the price reaches a low level that the big group of buyers decide is the "fair price to buy" and drive the price back up, we'll call that the support level or the "fair price level", this is where big volume of coins have been sold and then big volume bought the price up again. Now whenever this "fair price level" gets tested and broken, usually the chart plummets as people panic-sell their coins - but for this period of the time, the "fair price" has not changed! So usually, the big group of buyers steps in after some hours (or sometimes days) and brings the price back up to, or close to, that "fair price level". In fact, you can see this in the last few days:

On March 15, the "fair price level" that I am talking about, where large volume was sold and then large volume was bought, this is visible at about $570. March 17, we have the big panic drop that you were concerned about, but it has already returned to the fair price level of $570, if only for a short time! If you carefully examine the chart in the past, you can see this pattern repeat over and over again. The new "fair price level" was reached on March 18 at about $460. So if the price drops significantly below that, another panic dive followed by a short-term buyback to about $460 is quite likely.

This is all just my own opinion and thoughts, you make your own decisions and take your own risks. But I do not think the evidence suggests that ETH is in anyway "dead" right now.

There is a lot of replies in this thread, I think it is very important to carefully assess the entire situation, maybe your boss is a help, or maybe not; you need to carefully analyse the situation to make the best choice for yourself, the first and most important thing is your own health and safety, that includes mental wellbeing. If you need to remain there for whatever reason, then you need to protect yourself as best as you possibly can. Minimise the damage done to you, no matter what happens. Too much stress and being worn-down by such a difficult situation can really take its toll on you in the long run...

Definitely not too late to join the fun of Crypto. There always seems to be tons of new projects, as you can see on this board: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0
Personally I recommend bitcore (BTX), the main thread is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0. If you register your address for the airdrop and your wallet contains at least 1 BTX, you get a nice airdrop every week. You can download the wallet from the official github here: https://github.com/LIMXTEC/BitCore/releases. Enjoy crypto!

Thank YOU very much for the DOGE and also for "ignoring" my newbie status here. I have the account a few years now, when I first started getting involved with the cryptoworld, but then I paused for a couple of years and this is why I am still newbie here.

I'll make sure to support your site daily either I see you on FH or not. You and your site deserve it

I like your site a lot and I do use it too. It is well structured and you can easily find what you are looking for. Well, not the very first time I visited it, because I was probably overwhelmed with all that crypto stuff, but after the first shock everything was great.
Also chatting with you on Faucethub makes me like it even more, because you are always polite and very generous. Thank you for that!

I wish you ALL THE BEST for the new year!


My address
DRjBYj2rkd2BTEM8FCS6xMD7GYwgmX81uY

Well, glad I started today then, thank you

I got 50k yesterday, but I have no idea how to upload a pic here

Ticket # 4904SN-PIQMVK

That was my 460th ticket with my email-address account. I was using microwallet for almost 900 tickets, but I never ever got anything higher than 2,000.

THANK YOU for the great site!