I am really starting to doubt that Bitcoin will ever make it past the 20K mark. Sure it's had an astronomical run, but the cracks in it's architecture are really starting to show (tx costs and tx backlogs).
Obviously, I have no empirical data to prove it, but just like reading charts and waves....It's more of an ART than a SCIENCE!
Most of these issues are because most of the exchanges like coinbase have yet to implement segwit. In coinbase they are not using batch transactions either. Just by Coinbase doing this it will cut congestion on the bitcoin network dramatically . Next year at this time we will be complaining why coinbase hasn't opened a lightning channel. All of us bitcoin users need to apply pressure to these exchanges. I'm personally looking at bitflyer here in the US to by bitcoin with fiat as coinbase is a failure as far as i'm concerned.
Why would anyone buy bitcoin at a site like coinbase ? I've been using bitpanda, they have BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, XRP and DASH, so you buy the least volatile, send that to an exchange you like and buy bitcoin there when it's convenient.
Is bitpanda open to US customers?
No idea. As luck usually has it, probably not... but give it a test, bitpanda.com
Oh I remember now, they has an exhaustive ID check at the beginning.
I completely agree. I heard yesterday from my buddy it's now taking 9 days to get BTC after your purchase! The market will find a workaround and then Bitcoin will have no choice but to get on with Segwit and speed up the development of lightening network. I bought an interesting coin, ENG that: "Enigma is a second-layer, off-chain network to solve the two biggest blockchains problems: scalability and privacy". Maybe they will come to the rescue. I doubt Bitcoin would move on it though.
Yea it's crazy. I have a like .05 of bitcoin that i have been accumulating with scheduled payday buys that i stopped because of the issues. I think i'm just going to sell it into fiat near the top of the next run up. Set up a bitflyer account and buy back in on a dip. I'm done with coinbase.
In 2018 there should be at least one electronically trades fund for cryptos that will make it easy for everyone to purchase. You'll be able to just open a brokerage account or buy it within your retirement savings account. So you'll certainly have your chance to stash some savings as you get it.
I think that if it falls down, a lot of people will want to buy cheap => rally => even more to buy because bullrun => 25k$ at least. That's why some downtrend to 10k$ could be really good for btc.
Or it will just go up to 25k$ in a few weeks, then something will happen that will make it go even higher, some tech or some new use of btc (nasdaq, amazon or any other kind of thing that bring money into the system)
As long as these cracks remain, I also doubt we will see much dynamics. It will put more pressure on to solve scalability even more, which I believe is possible. When solved, we can see similar dynamics as in 2017 again.
Personally I think Dash will steal the torch from BTC. Everything about Dash looks a lot like what BTC was at the beginning of the year. Dash has an on chain lightning network with 1.3 second Tx and they are on their path to 400MB blocks.