As far as I know, there were successful tests of lightning network on the testnet. It will still take a lot of time before it will be implemented on the mainnet and then added to wallets. It's quite interesting to see it but Litecoin has introduced LN much earlier. Steam removed Bitcoin payments a few days ago and now... they are back. Quite amusing, isn't it? Amazon will probably wait a little bit longer. I will pay with Bitcoin as soon as it becomes available. It's pain to cash out BTC in order to buy more GPUs for mining.

I wouldn't say that Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. As you said, the owner should earn the most. Every single person here can check if anyone has moved BTC from the first addresses on which are bitcoins mined from 50 BTC blocks. I think that Bitcoin is a great technology which can destroy banks. That is why many politicians and bank owners try to discourage ordinary people from investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They consider is as a huge threat.

We should support altcoins simply because Bitcoin can't be used for everything. Does Bitcoin support smart contracts and tokens like Ethereum? Does it work as fast as Litecoin? Does it have completely anonymous addresses like Zcash? Bitcoin is far bigger than all this coins. They are all used for different purposes by different people. It is really hard to introduce an upgrade to Bitcoin because our community is big and has many different opinion on for example the block size or whether or not we should have introduced SegWit.

It is quite difficult to answer this question. Blockchain hack is very unlike to happen because this technology is quite secure. If another country as big as China decided to ban Bitcoin, it could slightly affect Bitcoin price but it would eventually recover. Major exchange hack could be critical but let's think about it for a moment. Less BTC by many people is treated as increase in a total value. People would rather withdraw their BTC from exchanges than sell it.

Panic selling is big problem among people who are inexperienced in both trading and investing. New people are usually impatient and want to earn a lot in a short period of time. I would say that panic buy is good but only in Bitcoin case. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency at it is highly possible that it will continue to grow and eventually become adopted as a national currency in some country. You will eventually profit but you will have to wait a bit longer.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are different projects. Bitcoin is supposed to be developed as a currency, its value has been increasing lately. Ethereum has a lot of features that Bitcoin doesn't have for example personal tokens, smartcontracts and applications run on blockchain. Ethereum value won't increase as fast as Bitcoin but it is definitely worth looking into it. I wouldn't be surprised if Ethereum continued to be the most used altcoin for the next years.

Thank you for your reply. I was quite sure that there was a hidden option to create a SegWit address on Bitcoin Core client using console. I have already seen transactions to SegWit native addresses but most of them are not displayed on block explorers due to "Can't decode error". In January I should receive my Trezor T which in the newest update started supporting this type of address. Not many people use them despite that they are generated also in Electrum. Do you happen to know why is that?

Interesting statement. I would say that altcoins are fighting with each other before most of the world adapts cryptocurrencies for daily use. I wouldn't be surprised if Ethereum was the first altcoin which would be used the most because of tokens. Unfortunately, I'm not acknowledged with altcoins so I can't really tell which have high chances to survive. It will be quite interesting to observe what will happen to all these Bitcoin hard forks which happened this year.

There are plenty of ways to exchange your BTC to cash. The most used method is selling on an exchange which pays out in fiat. I can't recommend you any because I don't know from which country you are. The other way is sell your BTC face-to-face. I would recommend website called localbitcoins for that. It's fairly good because nobody can scam you and you have opportunity to meet new people! It is always good to have someone acknowledged with cryptocurrencies.

Congratulations on finding such an important thing. We will try to help you. Does Windows recognize the flash drive and shows it in the explorer? Did you try to install third party software which can for example manage partitions? These are very important information without which we won't be able to help you any further. If you manage to access the pendrive, do you know how the wallet is saved? Private keys in plaintext, Bitcore wallet .dat etc

Well, the SegWit1x has been already introduced and it helped with lowering the fees but it is not our fault that most of the community haven't switched to SegWit addresses. The latest version of Electrum supports SegWit but (un)fortunately, it generates new type of SegWit addresses which as far as I know, are not compatible with legacy addresses (correct me if I'm wrong). Also, many exchanges don't use SegWit addresses for deposit and withdrawals so you should blame them.

That is what differs Bitcoin from banking system. If you die, it is highly possible that nobody will ever access your bitcoins. If Bitcoin becomes adapted by countries, it will be somehow regulated and there should be a procedure to follow in such situation. Still, I wouldn't share my private key or access to my hardware wallet with anyone. I would rather die with my bitcoins than give it to someone else (except charity and children).

That is what I have been waiting for. I have sold some of my BTC for $17.000 hoping that there will be a correction and I was right! The only question is that how big will be the decrease in Bitcoin value? I don't want to risk my investment so I'll probably buy BTC soon. As far as I remember, last correction was in the middle of September and it lasted about 2 weeks. It would great to see something like this once again, I would have enough time to organize funds.

Good luck with shorting Bitcoin. In my opinion, it is too risky to trade at the beginning of introducing such important thing. We can't really tell what the investors will do. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to force a huge dump and then they would buy BTC for a lower price. They could repeat this a few times and voila! It's basically free money for them. I don't want to lose my BTC so I won't risk. I won't trade.

If I were you, I would invest directly in Bitcoin. I would say that Bitcoin value will increase faster than Ethereum. Ethereum is interesting because of its token support. However, there were many scam ICOs this year and many people lost their money. Also, if you were interested in investing in ICOs, you have to keep in mind that it can take a few months before you will get your money back. Not to mention the profit.

Yes, it is common to see 30% decrease once in a while, it is called a correction. It isn't healthy for Bitcoin to increase constantly. You may ask why they happen. It is simply because people want to sell BTC in order to profit from the last increase. After the price of Bitcoin decline a lot, they buy BTC and have more than they had before. It's simple but not recommended for newcomers who are usually emotional and panic easily.

As far as I know, Japan has already started to recognize Bitcoin as a currency. A lot of people in recent months started to become interested in cryptocurrencies. Most of the people who gather here, start to see advantages of using cryptocurrencies over conventional banking. Some countries have banned Bitcoin but none of the most powerful ones did that. China tried to prohibit Bitcoin trading (which by the way affected Bitcoin price) and now Chinese government is thinking about lifting the ban.

Not every Bitcoin hard fork is worth claiming (this process is quite complex sometimes if forked coin doesn't have replay protection). Both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold were interesting because they were different. Bitcoin Cash hard fork increased the block size limit in order to make transaction faster. Bitcoin Gold was supposed to make Bitcoin "decentralized again" and replaced ASIC mining with GPU mining like it used to be a few years ago. There are some small hard forks which don't get much attention. If you don't have a lot of BTC, it isn't worth to bother with smaller ones.

You call Bitcoin a ponzi scheme because of huge amount of transactions? Are you high? It's not the first time when Bitcoin shows that it can't handle traffic during important events (in this case a huge pump). It's our duty to maintain and upgrade Bitcoin. We have already made one step forward by introducing SegWit which many companies still haven't implemented. It's their fault, not ours. What else can we do? (except increasing the blocksize).

We can't really tell how long it will take for Bitcoin to stabilize. Bitcoin is still in its early state and a lot of new people are starting their journey with cryptocurrencies. I wouldn't be surprised if it took another 10 years for Bitcoin to stabilize. In my opinion, it will be worth more than it is today. It is a matter of time before people will understand the potential of Bitcoin. I will continue to buy Bitcoin whatever the price will be. There are a lot of people who missed opportunity to buy BTC and now they want to earn quite a lot by pumping and dumping it.