Bitcoin has proven rather resilient against defamation and bad press. That can cause a dip but it typically rebounds quickly. There are some things that people can do if they control a large enough pool of bitcoin or enough of the miners.
They can increase the mining fees so the prices are so extreme that people decide to leave the network. The vendors such as bitpay can make normal adding of funds to their visa now require a copay like wallet. They can recommend their bitpay wallet which once you use it you find out they think you need a fee so high that even transferring $138 from their wallet to the bitpay card is indicated as not having sufficient funds.
Is this what is happening? I don't know.
I do know that bitcoin was going up quite steadily with a few small dips until recently. I also know a couple of days ago Bitpay instituted their new approach which makes their Visa and their Wallet highly undesireable.
I don't know if this is going on elsewhere out there in Bitcoin world. It is interesting that these changes happened right around the time bitcoin starts taking a dive.
This makes me wonder if the insane miner fees are a good way to crash the currency while racking up insane amounts of bitcoin in the form of fees and then potentially they could then buy back in for a much lower cost and reduce their fees so the network becomes attractive again.
I can tell you I've been a bitcoin fan. I haven't cared for its slowness and I understand why it is slow. I will say that the fees are an even bigger problem than the slowness. All of those predictions about where bitcoin will go by the end of 2018 or by 2020. If the fees keep going up and remain as high as they currently are I'll state it isn't going to happen.
The fees are so ridiculously expensive that it is making a lot of other cryptocurrencies look a lot more attractive. So there are better cryptos than Bitcoin as far as doing the job. They haven't taken over mainly because Bitcoin is established as the currency that is the exchange unit between other cryptos, and between cryptos and fiat.
There are others that can fill this role now, with much lower fees, and that are much faster and scale better. Why haven't people adopted them? I'd say largely because of how lucrative bitcoin has been as an investment. Yet that value is lost if the fees do not remain low. 0.001 BTC was not a bad deal when Bitcoin was going for $500. While it still was higher than alternatives it was bearable. As the price of bitcoin increased and that 0.001 BTC (or higher) remained it started to hurt more and more. I can tell you I had 0.009 BTC in my Bitpay Wallet and it said I didn't have enough to transfer ANY of that to my bitpay card. It requires what it calls a normal fee and from what I gather that is probably around 0.01 BTC which is insane. I ended up switching to a "super economy" fee which it won't let you use to add to the bitpay card and that was still ridiculously expensive.
Is this just stupidity and greed, or is their perhaps more of a purpose to it?
I can tell you it has made me start looking for alternatives to bitcoin quickly and I'll be giving the SHIFT card from Coinbase a good look since it can also be powered up by Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum. All of those have substantially lower fees than Bitcoin.
Too bad people don't clue into Steem since it is faster than ALL of those and has no fees.
So do you think their could be some manipulation going on with regards to the miner fees?
Also... message to John McAfee. If you own this huge batch of miners that you keep referring to and you have your fees at some stupid level then I suspect your boast that if it doesn't hit $1 million per bitcoin by 2020 you'll eat your dick will have you eating dick.
Those of you that have any input or control over these fees. If you're goal is to make bitcoin extremely unattractive, keep it up. If that isn't your goal then check your greed and fix your fees.
That transfer I did from the bitpay wallet for the "super economy" has been pending on coinbase for probably close to 6 or 7 hours now. The fee also looks like it ended up being around 0.0015 Bitcoin, maybe more. That is what they are calling "Super Economy". I've seen poloniex transfer faster using 0.0002 bitcoin TODAY. Thus, I suspect bitpay actually used a much smaller amount and pocketed the rest.
So apparently I sent it 10 hours ago and it is still listed as pending at coinbase. I sent it there with plans to pick up a SHIFT card rather than bitpay.
THANKS, good words, clear and helpful!
We all benefit from this input.
And about Johns dick; it must be a small one, others wise impossible to eat it all........
And we know; the bigger their stack the smaller their.....
Needed correction. Buy time is now. And, I totally agree we need to switch from btc as our base. Xrp would be drastically better for exchanges. Way way faster and no incredibly ridiculous fees.
I did pick up some ripple over the past few days and yes, I did purchase a bit more today.
I was so lucky I switched over half my holdings to ripple yesterday. I wish I could tell all the newbies not to sell here at bottom. It's buy time.
Yeah I am sitting still mostly in bitcoin. I did convert some of it to ripple. Not a ton, but some.
Still all good. Setting the road for bigger gains. I know you know, but for people reading we will rally back with a vengeance. Great post bud,
And correction... I am mostly sitting in steem. :) Yet I did buy some bitcoin. My bittrex account was $10,000+ last night when I went to sleep. Currently it is about $7858.57.
My steemit account is $50,000+ :) That is nice to see.
I bet, you are doing your duty here. I am in xrp, and sub mainly. Just joined this community. I love it so far, wish they had more stuff on stocks though. If you invest in stocks. Do some research on omeros, it's a bio-pharma company with couple drugs about to be fda approved. I believe it becomes one of the biggest pharma companies in the world.Could very well be a 10 bagger next couple years. I have several thousand leveraged with call options in 2020.
I do wish there was a larger outcry not to have bitcoin be the base.
Well if they keep making fees like this then the conversion will occur. People will not outcry so much as just stop using it when they find an alternative to use.
What would be your preferred base crypto? I know people dislike xrp, I think it's perfect though.
The big problem I see with XRP is it is centralized. It is not decentralized. This means it can be controlled by the man in the middle. They may not be doing it yet, as that would be stupid but they could.
For general use... STEEM or perhaps EOS as they are even faster than XRP as far as I know. EOS will be able to handle the smart contract stuff if that is what people want.
Though if anonymity becomes and issue then Monero may be the one I'd use for that. I've only recently really looked at it.
For pure speed though I'd go with steem.
What makes Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, etc nice is they have a fixed maximum supply. So as long as the coins continue to have a use they should go up in value as usage of them increases.
Steem has a constant infusion so it should technically never go to insane values, but it could be more valuable in the long run just we'd be holding larger quantities of it.
I agree with xrp being centralized. I also feel like this is what it was built for though. An almost perfect use case fit. Would love to see steem too.
shift card will work with etherium or litecoin on coinbase.
your choice.
I have no skin in the game, (have lots of steem now! wooohooo)..and a skeptic (re government and banking control).
I never thought of this, but this could be system to control it all. You are slave to transaction fees..?
I know bugger all, ....just sayin'...
Well not all cryptos have those. Yet bitcoin does. There are no transaction fees for steem and it is WAY faster.
I can say that cryptos across the board seem to be taking a dive at the moment (though steem still looks nice :) not just bitcoin.
bitcoin the testing currency only?.............if this is the case, it bodes well, not badly - for the future of non government controlled crypto........I think...I'm lost! lol
Yeah... I suspect crypto will be the future of money in the long run. Which one will win out, or will we be stuck with many remains to be seen.
I think so to, it's just the bloody sneaky corrupt evil banks/gvmnt's I'm worried about...
I just cant see them giving up control of something they have had for so long...
...Not without a fight - and they don't play fair, that is a 100% guarantee...
Well let me tell you something. I actually looked at bitcoin when it was less than 1 cent per bitcoin. I thought it was a cool idea.
I had $20 to buy it or a pizza.
I said something along the lines of "The government is likely to crush it". I bought a Pizza instead.
Had I chosen to buy the bitcoin instead I would have been a millionaire many times over for the price of a pizza.
So I do take a little risk now. Not a lot, but some.
I was laid up in bed with a smashed leg from a bike accident when I heard about it the idea of it. ( it hadn't been launched)
I thought ' yeah, that's where it's goin, I'll have some of that , I'll put 800 dollars in ..' (£500 pounds at the time)
Then dying parents and caring for them the took over, and my mind wasn't in crypto for a few years...
bollox! lolol.
I'm not risk averse to be honest, just skint . lol
I hear you,on the, is this planned part. I have been getting message of high trading and service may be down ,with my Blockchain wallet all week.
Seams like they are having a blow out sale since last night on all cryptos.
most are 20% off right now.
Buy if you can,HODL if you can't!
:-)
important chart
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Thanks for such a detailed information @dwinblood.
you always have the best content dwinblood keep it up!
Great at article
Spot on man!
Found your post through AskSteem btw.