Bitcoin Adoption

[Sligolad]

As a long time bitcoin follower it was great to see it finally drag itself into 2017 by breaking the $1,000 dollar mark again.
I have been on the Bitcoin train since the price was about $30 in 2013 and watched the infamous Mt-Gox $1,000 bubble in 2013 only to crash after that.

Somehow I now feel this will not happen again, there will possibly be a correction depending on what China does this year but we will never see the kind of volatility we have seen in the past unless the internet breaks or is broken!!

Its the shape of the future as far as I can see and with countries already scrapping big cash notes we are already on the road to a cashless future.


Bitcoin has outperformed all currencies for the past 3 years by a significant margin and hopefully 2017 will be the year it breaks out of the early adoption curve into the early majority phase. http://www.blocklink.info/

For those wishing to learn more about Bitcoin from a passionate believer who sold his house to travel the world and deliver talks on Bitcoin after the Greek Financial collapse, see here for some YouTube videos. https://antonopoulos.com/

I use it for online purchasing and mainly for digital audio downloads and the rest I have sitting accumulating value.
The best advice you can get from anyone into Bitcoin is to never buy more than you are prepared to loose.

[Diapason]

As somebody who makes a living in the currency markets, I find the whole bitcoin thing fascinating, and definitely something to keep an eye on. As always, I feel like I'm looking at the trade too late!

[Sligolad]

As long as China keeps devaluing the Yuan Simon then it is not too late, stronger capital controls by China on the outflow through Bitcoin is the other watch out but until then its all upside.

Will be interesting to see if the SEC approves some pending ETFs for Bitcoin this year...the Winklevoss twins have been fighting for 3 years now to get approval so if it happens in 2017 then it will kick-start another surge.

I think 2017 is going to be one crazy year for global finance, currencies and stock markets and who knows how it will all end....

There will be a lot of mainstream awakening to Bitcoin in 2017.

[Diapason]

I'm actually not allowed to trade or invest in currencies for my personal account, but I'll happily cheer you on, Pearse!

[Sligolad]

The Bitcoin Roller-coaster continues after China finally started flexing its muscles after all the capital outflow and over eager free trading the price took a blow but since then it bounced back even stronger. Up more than 25% since I started this in January.

Could be another correction and profit taking soon as it is taking off again on the possible SEC clearance for the Winklevoss twins but also with some strong crypto and bitcoin players in the new Trump Administration.

Japan have now become a big player in the past 2 months and this will drive the price higher.
All time records broken in the past week and a Bitcoin has surpassed the old comparison to an ounce of gold.

Strange times and it is definitely going to be an interesting year in the Bitcoin space.
The first country to throw its weight behind it will win big I think, maybe Canada, Australia or Japan.
China are talking about launching their own Crypto Currency and it would not surprise me if they make a big go of it this year.

[HiFiFan]

Coursera is offering a free (I think) course on the technology behind bitcoin.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocu ... 2017_05_15

[Sligolad]

I expect there will be a decent take up on this as there are almost a thousand different cryptocurriencies in play and a new generation trading in these daily.

If I was retired I would definitely be interested in learning more but quite happy with my investments in Bitcoin and more recently Ripple.
There are lots of good guides online on how to get started investing like here.
https://ripple.com/xrp-portal/how-to-buy-xrp/

The Bitcoin steam train is still pushing ahead strongly with Japan, Australia and Canada now strongly supporting.
Its been holding strong recently at $1,700 which is well ahead of expectations from $1,000 in January of this year.

Ripple is an interesting crypto and has really taken off in the past 2 weeks going from 0.04 per unit to 0.24 which is a 600% increase.
Interesting times.

[tony]

Guy in work has made lots playing with this stuff Pearse. No doubt you have picked something that has the potential for massive profits.
Would think we any of this type of thing one has to put in only what they are prepared to lose and know when to take a profit.

The nagging feeling on this is that it could all go pear shaped at some point. But I admire the time and research you have put in and no doubt as an early adopter unless you refuse to take your profits you have made a killing..

[Sligolad]

So first off happy new year to all and I expect it is going to be another crazy year in crypto world! An update for those who may be interested in Bitcoin a year on from my first post.

2017 has been another amazing year in the Bitcoin space and once again it has outperformed my expectations despite all the attacks from government, corporate, financial sector, miners and worse still from within the community.

Thankfully the growing community who understand the fundamentals of the technology held strong and grew into a much stronger voice and now have a real powerful network effect, this network effect and the explosion of improvements coming in 2018 will with the continued growth in knowledge in the community win over the remaining challenges.

Price still remains half the story to me though it is still difficult to avoid checking in on it when you see growth of 12 times the value in 2017, it is going to be more difficult to avoid price checking in 2018 now with futures in place and etf’s in the coming months.
The financial sector despite all the negative spin is finally buying in and will cause all kinds of disruption in the process.

What will be exciting in 2018 is when two of the biggest remaining bad actors in the space (Coinbase and Bitpay) get on board with Segwit, these big players are heavily funded by Bitmain and have not been helping the growth of bitcoin to a second layer solution which will allow very cheap and fast transactions at a scale equal to and greater than PayPal, Visa and the like. The good news is that if they continue to resist there are alternative solutions such as peer to peer exchanges like Bisq and payment processors like BTCpay coming on stream and these are Segwit friendly.

My great hope for 2018 is that we get the lightning network up and running in large scale and get mass adoption of Segwit. Schnoor signatures, Bullet Proofs and other improvements are being worked on by the core developers and the fast growing extended community so there is a lot to look forward to on the technology front.
No doubt we will get a big fight from miners, exchanges and processors who are loving the short term gains on high fees which they are inflating for short term profits. As soon as more people who are jumping in blind for profit become aware of this manipulation the sooner we will see another big community effort to change the behaviour once again of these bad actors.

OK there is a lot of jargon and gibberish to most people new to this space in my writing above, but if you are interested in investing your hard earned currency in this space then I would advise those to educate yourselves first before jumping in blind, and do not start with somewhere like Bitcom.com as it has been taken over by a Judas in the bitcoin community….a whole other story.

Bitstamp remains my favourite exchange for over 4 years now and have continued to behave well towards the massively growing community. They were ahead of the posse when it came to Segwit adoption.

As always never invest more that you are willing to lose but if you win you may win well!

[Diapason]

Very interesting update, Pearse. For obvious reasons I'm fascinated by the space, and intrigued to see where things go from here. I've thing is certain, whenever there are huge profits to be made, I'll have missed the boat!