I'm sure everyone saw the article by now, but Bittrex was shutting down access to certain accounts in countries like Iran, etc. It only affects .1% of accounts, but I think is an important topic to point out the concept that a central authority, even if it is an authority of crypto-currency enthusiasts can shut down access if pressured by a 3rd party or otherwise.
Here's the article in case you missed it
https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-altcoin-exchange-bittrex-eyed-with-suspicion-due-to-thousands-of-mysterious-account-closings
The more time I spend on the Bitshares DEX, the more I like it. I control the keys, and I control the terms I provide to myself. If that sounds confusing.... check out the below youtube video about providing an interest-free (or near zero) margin loan to yourself based on your BTS holdings. The more I watched it, the more it blew my mind on how the 'decentralize everything' movement is going to take over the fiat fractional reserve system.
I encourage everyone to go practice using a small amount just to get the idea on how margin trading works.
If you create a Bitshares account and load it up with some BTS, you can then take out a loan from yourself and use bitBTC or bitUSD to invest it in a number of other things. You can short the US dollar, which I personally think is going to go down, or you can buy bitGold or bitSilver, or Yuan (CNY) or Euro, etc etc, or you can buy more BTS, because BTS is definitely going to go up. The fact that you can do this as your own personal banker is a game changer.
Anyways, it's an exciting concept which I encourage you to check out.
In other news, the rest of the market has been sort of flat, with Lumens spiking on the IBM partnership in Indonesia/Thailand. At one point I had some Lumens, but both Ripple XRP, Stellar Lumens, and Pay, Factom, and a few others really rub me the wrong way, as I think there is nothing keeping those organizations from deriving zero value from the coin or token holder, but using the funds as a way to grow their proprietary business. XRP is the best example as there is no way that existing banks are going to the use the XRP token as their mechanism to send funds through the blockchain, but might use the Ripple technology, but they are most definitely going to stiff the holders of XRP in favor of their own crypto which they control. Same goes for the IMF, Ruble-coin, Whoppercoin, and whatever other business wants to launch a crypto-equivalent. Within a matter of minutes I can launch my own smillercoin on Waves, BTS or otherwise, and I control the quantity and distribution, but what I don't control is the demand. The moral of the story here is be wary of venture backed businesses that run a coin ICO or offering in conjunction, that typically say the coin or token has zero value. The exception to this rule is EOS, but if I try to see into the future, I see Draper, or the Javascript guy saying, oh well your screwed when BAT or FACTOM turns out to have zero value, but thanks for helping us grow our business.
I finally caved and joined Twitter. I cancelled my Facebook back in 2013 or so, and vowed never to have a Twitter or an whatever else you call it, Snapchat that disappears or Instagram. It's too much to keep up with. But after wanting to get more real-time information from some of my crypto-gurus I follow, I finally caved, and before I knew it I was following 50 people in the crypto-space, and I have 3 followers which are all robots, even though I don't plan on ever tweeting myself.
It's interesting to have a real-time view into someone's passing thoughts. A lot of people have passing thoughts that I could care less about, but I'm interested in what really smart people are thinking about, and gain insight in a way that really changes the dynamics of life, and how fast things happen. I was resistant to things like Twitter for so long, but then epic movements like the Arab Spring come to mind when Twitter gave people the ability to communicate and gather in a way that was unprecedented in the modern era.
Lastly, I'll just mention the forks again.... this time with Ethereum. The transaction times for me to get EXP sent to Poloniex took 120 confirmations, and took about 1 hr. I missed out on the spike in EXP and by the time I could sell the bounce was over. I think both Bitcoin and Ethereum are bogged down by making sure they are proceeding wisely and gaining consensus and such. This is not a technical analysis or professional opinion. If they fork Ethereum a couple times to try to increase transaction speeds, or whatever else they are trying to accomplish, they are going to get their clock cleaned by other developments that are either fully open source, or have an army of developers inspired by revolution. I am doubling down that I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are merely a conduit into technologies of the future, and they opened Pandora's box for which I thank them, but don't plan on HODling.
