If he was into it that early, he's probably worth a few quid

Interesting article. Cheers.

From my experience a lot of people that have been involved pre 2017 are not as well off as you think. Bitcoin surged from $100 up to $1200 in 2013 and then when Mt.Gox (a centralised exchange) was hacked it brought the price down to $220ish. A lot of people who owned bitcoin in this era were familiar with the turbulent cycles and therefore sell off some of their holdings over time so they aren't overexposed.

AA: Scaling strategies and adoption (6 minutes)

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/07/better-call-saul-season-4-review-breaking-bad-better-1201986950/

Fantastic new video from Andreas. Worth the watch if you have 40 minutes free.

Receiving a speeding fine from my last trip to Germany €15.00

Haha I recently got one for €15 in Germany too. Was doing 56kmh in a 50 ffs. They caught me coming into a town where the speed limit dropped from 80 too, I am not a serial speeder at all.

TBH if I had known it was so cheap, I would speed all the time.

Can someone give me an unbiased view on what may or may not be expected to happen in the forthcoming months? I'm completely ignorant of UK politics these days (and a lot happier shall I say!).

The fact that bitcoin is not widely inaugurated into society does not measure it's success now, nor tomorrow. You are completely right that almost no businesses strictly accept bitcoin over FIAT. Government backed currencies are the way we handle transactions in almost every form of business. If the dominating currency was sea shells, gold coins, tulip bulbs or beads on a necklace then that is exactly the type of payment method that almost all businesses would be accepting as form of payment. To conclude that bitcoin isn't ground breaking or has a potential to completely change how we see money on the merit that our current system of FIAT money is completely dominating is nothing short of ignorant. Money has evolved over tens of thousands of years and FIAT money is just a mere dot on the spectrum. Money is forever evolving and we live in quite a wonderful era where things change much faster than ever. We live in a very rare space of time where everyone standing on earth has only been familiar with FIAT currencies and therefore It is difficult to imagine anything else is possible.

In regards to the point that the GBP is very stable I agree. Fiat currencies are majestic in holding its value to within x% in most of the largest economies but are a tragic long term store of value. Their nature dictates so and it is undeniably a flaw. Before fiat we could just acquire money and it would hold its value because it was an asset in itself, a feature that the GBP EUR and USD clearly don't exhibit.

If it looks like a duck...

If your mate made himself wealthy through an MLM there are two possibilities: He is an evil bastard or very very lucky (or both). Most people lose a lot of time and money through them but a handful get rich. If you happen to get lucky like your friend did and he was unaware it was an MLM, he will fall victim to something like it again and learn the hard way.

Mize looks like a scam, I don't understand anything that is on their website and there is no subreddit available for it yet.

If by supernodes you means masternodes then yes. They aren't a new thing. The requirement is that you have a certain amount of holdings of a coin (often substantial) and you will have to have a node running 24/7. I think it's a way of improving the security of the network.

Bitcoin was an experiment that one guy thought up 9 years ago. It is only really in the last year or two that there has been a vast increase in adoption.

Saying that there needs to be bookshops across the globe accepting bitcoin for it to be successful is lame.

@Doobs I agree that banks seem cheap, quick and less easy but remember that you are living in the United Kingdom. We are blessed with governments and banking systems that haven't failed for quite a long time.

It is free and fast to send a bank transfer to someone in the same country as yourself, but beyond that bitcoin is much better. It is virtually free to make a transaction, it takes 10 minutes and it is much more secure.

...more merchants are accepting bitcoin, more people are paying in bitcoin and more people are being paid in bitcoin.

Like I said - is there a record of this anywhere?

I would have thought this record of transactions, of bitcoin being used to pay for things, is the best indicator of how successful it's actually doing (rather than it's speculative value).

Mostly my own experience. I do part time work for a bitcoin merchant company and an ico startup in Nijmegen, Netherlands and see it for myself. I get paid in bitcoin. At the Bitcoin merchant company they have 33 staff members of which when asked if they would like their salary partially paid in bitcoin- 33 obliged.

I will keep looking for more records of OTC transactions, but my neighbouring city Arnhem has taken the initiative on accepting bitcoin at several places such as cafes, restaurants, leisure centres, dentists, diy shops, bars, clothes shops, supermarkets, hotels, theaters. The list goes on.

Here is a map of the current places in Arnhem you can pay with Bitcoin.

Click to see full-size image.

I think what is impressive to me is that we have a network that was created with one of it's main function to transfer value to one another as a complete test just 9 years ago and yet here we are already. It was only a year ago that most people had ever heard of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin just doesn't qualify as a good short term store of value. Currently if you are a merchant of some sort that will be holding onto your crypto for only a month at a time and you're surviving month to month you just can't justify using it. There aren't really any answers to this right now, Bitcoin can't solve everything. Two things worth noting however, fiat backed currencies are a tragic long term store of value. Most of them offer a very secure long term store of value despite an almost guarantee of them losing value year in year out. Even then, fiat backed currencies have a history of failing- luckily everyone reading this forum haven't had to deal with a failed government or hyperinflation. Secondly is the volatility.

The volatility of Bitcoin is probably due to two factors. It is a completely speculative asset for a lot of people, it's currently an asset for the majority since most people aren't actually spending many of their cryptocurrencies but holding them due to their perceived value. The bull run we saw last year was unprecedented for most people on this forum despite the same thing happening already many times before (at least 4 or 5). When the hype dies down each time (like we are seeing in the last couple of months) the network becomes more resilient, infrastructure is improved and merchants/exchanges are much more prepared for the next wave of people (and it is 100% coming). On each new run it begins with new people entering the cryptosphere with the price being driven up at an outrageous rate. There is a lot of disagreement with what a bitcoin is worth and I believe a lot of people get caught up with what a bitcoin could/should/will be worth- I was definitely one of these people  . The value of a bitcoin can/will/should be determined by the amount of people who understand in the value of the lack of a mediator in monetary transactions and how Bitcoin has the capability to take over how we think about and treat money. Currently bitcoin has a very low market cap relative to fiat currencies and more commonly known trusted assets like gold. Compared to fiat it's literally a splash in the ocean.

I think it's important to understand that the price of a bitcoin doesn't reflect the cost of a transaction on the network, or the security of the network, or the infrastructure around the network. Each day, improvements are made to the network, more merchants are accepting bitcoin, more people are paying in bitcoin and more people are being paid in bitcoin.

Might just about be the most ill informed and nonsense article I have read on Bitcoin- and it's 2018. The comments are actually more sensical.

Stick it on the Bitcoin obituary with the rest. https://99bitcoins.com/obituary-stats/

[have]

PS I totally agree that blockchain is going to be as transformative as the WWW, just don't think cryptos will be.

*Puffs cheeks* I'm gonna do my best to explain why this isn't the case another time. A blockchain on it's own doesn't mean much, it's just a ledger and isn't immutable. I have said it time and time again but immutability is the greatest asset to bitcoin.

I was originally planning on giving a technical explanation on this and was struggling because a) I'm not a crypto guru and b) Trying to explain very new technologies to people that are only at the beginning stages of development is a difficult task (see point A).

This is at least the 3rd time in this thread that I've seen such a comment and I think it's a pretty popular one just because people have heard it from other people (that's normal).

Why do blockchains not work without bitcoin or an intrinsic valuable asset?

• A blockchain as a strutcure is a very inefficient structure that is used purely for decentralisation
• In order to achieve decentralisation you need to validate transactions without giving a person or party the power of the network
• To achieve validation you need a consensus algorithm that depends on competition (Proof of work, proof of stake)
• For competition you need risk and reward
• In order to have a reward that is meaningful, you need an intrinsic token that people want.
• If you don't have something of value, the competition is defunct
• Without basis of competition you don't have security
• Without security you have to control validation centrally
• Without decentralisation there is no point in a blockchain, a traditional ledger is much more efficient

I want to say that this explanation is mine, but I have to credit Andreas Antonopoulos who seems to have a knack for explaining things.

Monies sent via paypal.

In if there's a spot