Yup - governments can stop bitcoin - just outlaw exhanges and make it a crime punishable by death to own them and people will stay away 

But then you have to ask yourselves which countries have cultures where they can easily ban Bitcoin and actually do it. It's easy to say that governments will ban it and use China as an example but China is not a free country - this is a country that's banned Facebook - sheessh, Facebook for crying out loud, Instagram, Youtube and so on.

Just ignore China and think of other countries - do you imagine Switzerland, France, Australia, Japan, Korea, Germany and so on actually blocking bitcoin.

I mean think about it - Japan has accepted it. Australian senators are pushing for bitcoin bec they're afraid to get left behind this technology, even Russia is warming up to Bitcoin.

Right now, just ignore anything related to China  - Bitcoin may still dip due to them but other nationalities will just scoop those cheap Bitcoin up.

Actually I'd rather they come out with more FUD again as I need to buy more cheap coins.

If you're looking at this from an idealistic point of view then yes, Mark Cuban is  making a mistake backing ICOs.

But looking at this as a businessman, at a time when people are crazily throwing money at ICOs - he's very smart. Yeah, whatever ICO he backs might disappear in 3-4 years time .. by that time - Mark Cuban probably would've profited already and won't care - he'll probably be in some other business earning more money.

This was how he got rich, getting a business for low and selling it high.

Thanks, I installed Ubuntu and signed the message there using the latest Electrum wallet - all working now.

Don't know how high it will go but until such time that a user-friendly wallet comes out where you don't need to download the whole blockchain and can EASILY be used in mobile phones - the price of Monery will not move that high.
To people above who wonder what's holding it back from being used - the answer is it's non-friendly wallet.

Just google around and you will find people taking days - weeks just trying to synchronize the wallet. Sometimes it will get stuck and you need the commandline to pop some blocks out to continue.
It also has no hardware wallet for now (may change later). No IOS(Apple) Wallet. There's supposed to be an Android wallet but I think you need to sign-up somewhere to get it with your email - in which case what's the point of using an anonymous currency.

Thanks, did everything but when I click the 'Sign' button I get this error message "False,0" .. I looked around and saw some people have the same issue before but it's supposed to be fixed.

I did this under the latest Tails 3 version, if I remember correctly the version of Electrum here is 2.7.9. Anywbody have an idea on this error ?

Hi .. I might be doing the Stellar Bitcoin giveaway (depending on how I end up feeling about their Facebook verification thing) and one of the steps is signing/verifying a message.

All my bitcoins are in a paper wallet and I want it to stay that way. I researched on steps to signing a message using my paper wallet and someone recommended importing the keys to a Electrum - but no detailed steps was given. I researched as I haven't used Electrum before and I want to verify if these steps would work - I use Electrum in Tails ver 2.8 (will update to 2.10 later) :

1. Use Tails -> start Electrum -> Restore using the Private Key of my paper wallet (all with my Internet Off)
2. Go to 'Addresses' -> Choose my Paper wallet address -> right-click and choose 'Sign/Verify Message'
3. Copy whatever message I need to sign into the popup wizard and sign it
3. Copy 'Signature' out (with notepad, by hand)
4. Delete my paper wallet address from Electrum

Again, my objective is to just sign/verify the message. I still want to keep whatever bitcoin I have in the paper wallet address so I don't want to 'Sweep' my paper wallet.

From a newbie who got introduced to bitcoin because I wanted to buy 'something' that only accepts bitcoin .. I didn't like the experience at all and I'm a computer programmer by profession so I'm comfortable with technology.

Here's my initial experience - I went about buying bitcoin, researched about wallets then read about warnings people gave - I don't know whether they are common threats / outdated info :
- Use paper or cold storage or else my bitcoins might get stolen - use a LiveCD, offline transaction signing, another PC/Laptop that has never been connected to the Internet
- when you send to someone, better create a new wallet 'offline' wallet since the keys have now been used (I believe Hot Key is the term)
- Oh have a 'Change Address' or else your bitcoins might get lost
- Never store your bitcoins with Exchanges in case they steal it or worst close up like Mt Gox

In the end, what I did was buy the exact bitcoins I needed, send to my phone wallet then paid. Oh and by the way, here in Australia, in order to buy bitcoins I needed to verify my identity to an exchange - as in send driver's license info, a utility address, passport etc (not sure if this is the case with other countries).

Anyway, I saw bitcoin as a good investment so bought some when they were 700 Australian dollars - here are the steps I did based on the recommendations I've read :
- download Tails and create Live USB
- download offline bitaddress from github
- disconnected my printer from Wifi, looked for my USB printer connector to print the paper wallets
- did all transfers from the bitcoin exchange to my paper wallet via Tails Live USB in case my windows PC has some sort of bitcoin stealing malware
- store my paper wallet never to be used until the day I decide to cash out
- all this on top of having to join an exchange in the first place

You can say that there's a similar 'bottleneck' with banks - that they also verify your details - but for banks, most working people already have them set uo to get their salary.
OR I can ignore and just use wallets as normal, but just read the internet and all those warnings are always there.

I also invest in stocks/funds using an online broker, using my home/work PC and my phone. I never had to worry about all these "offline transactions/offline storage/needing LiveUSB" with PayPal or CC.
If I ever have my CC get stolen and used illegally I can revert them with my bank.
My PayPal that I used for eBay buyers that sent me wrong / broken products I've gotten my money back.
My money is safely stored with my bank - yeah there's a small possibility banks can close but some of my money is insured.

So for the near future, I will keep using PayPal / CC and just use bitcoin as an investment (again in a paper wallet generated via Tails LiveUSB while offline - printed with an offline printer and stored several copies around like the days before the Internet was invented).