Hmm......this EMC2 pump is lasting a lot longer than I thought it would......
I wonder if there is some news behind this.
Have to investigate it.

1. Yes, this is due to more countries adopting stricter KYC regulations, in order to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities. However, you have to understand that this requirement is coming from the fiat side of the equation, not the cryptocurrency side. All online exchanges that supports fiat/crypto trades will require this. However, there is no such requirement for crypto/crypto exchanges.

2. In terms of traceability, it is even more transparent that fiat. With paper money, you can deal with someone in cash, and there is basically no record of the paper money changing hands. With a distributed ledger, each and every transaction, regardless of amount, all the way from the first transaction in the first block, is fully traceable and cannot be faked. This is the foundation upon which the blockchain technology was designed. The people transacting are anonymous. The transactions themselves are not.

3. No, private keys don't work like that. You don't need to "change it a few times to make it secure". As long as you yourself control the private keys (e.g. do not leave your coins on online exchanges), then your coins are secure. If you don't control your own private keys, then they are not secure no matter how many times you change your address. If you put your coins in a hardware wallet, where the private keys never leave the wallet itself and the wallet is un-hackable because it is not connected to the internet, then your coins are secure. Period. The only "risk" you have is if you are not careful and just leave your hardware wallet lying around everywhere where you can lose it or it can be stolen.

4. True, but that is because cryptocurrency was developed so it can be a trust-less system (i.e. you don't need to trust anyone but yourself). With fiat, you have to either store cold hard cash yourself (essentially the same as having a hardware wallet) or store it in a bank (just like storing a coin on an online exchange) where you have to trust the bank/exchange to give you your money/coin back when you withdraw it. The only difference here is that banks are government-regulated and your savings are insured by PIDM so the risk of default is lower. If (in a hypothetical doomsday extreme example) tomorrow the Malaysian government declared that all banks are to be taken offline immediately and all withdrawals are halted for one month, there is nothing you can do to access your money (I know it's a crazy example) which is what I meant by having to "trust" the bank that stores your money.

5. This is true, at least for the near foreseeable future, until cryptocurrency achieves global adoption into everyday life. Actually now people can already buy food/drinks, buy cars, buy houses, flight tickets, hotel bookings, etc. all using bitcoin, but not yet in Malaysia. Japan for example has just declared bitcoin as legal tender, and hundreds of thousands of merchants are accepting bitcoin as a mode of payment.


Public keys (addresses) can be shown to anyone at all times, there is no risk in that. In fact, it is a must for merchants (e.g. Starbucks will have to let every customer know their address in order to receive the payments in bitcoin).
With SHA-256 hashing and elliptic curve cryptography (a bit too long and mundane to explain here), it's pretty safe to say that it is practically impossible to derive your private keys just from knowing your public keys.
It's just your private keys that need to be kept secure. Although the public and private keys are mathematically linked, they cannot be backwards-decrypted.
Well OK, if you want to get down to the details of it, technically speaking even elliptic curve cryptography is vulnerable toa brute-force attack using quantum computing technology, but that's a different topic.
And if you are really paranoid, just spread your stash into various different addresses within the same hardware wallet, or even get multiple hardware wallets (just like putting your gold bars into many different vaults in different locations, each with a different lock combination).

This post has been edited by wengherng: May 20 2017, 04:45 PM

Well, I'm definitely not one of the savvy or knowledgeable ones here, but I heartily agree that the willingness to share and learn from each other, is one of the best attributes of this thread.
We're all small fries here (except for one certain individual here who shall not be named... ) just starting out and learning.
The main objective, along the way to earning riches for ourselves, is to also enrich the lives of others, and to pay it forward.

Yes, you are getting the concept now.
If you keep your coins on the online exchange, they are your bank. They can get hacked, go bust or otherwise deny your withdrawal.
In your hardware wallet, the coins are in your own vault, you are your own bank. You don't need approval from anyone to manage your wealth.

Online exchanges are necessary because they serve as a platform for everyone to trade, but because of this inherent function, they are also the first target for hackers since everyone knows they hold millions of dollars worth of various coins.
They are also prone to congestion and downtime and other undesirable situations, especially in times of euphoria or panic, which then leads to them taking emergency drastic measures like halting withdrawals and such.

Hence the importance of a trust-less system.
Be your own bank, control your own wealth.
Trust no one.

Probably should have bought it when you recommended it while it was still around 65 satoshi. Hehe.
This is crazy shit.

Yeah but what kind of correction would we be seeing in that scenario?
50% dip?
90% crash?
Based on my naive thinking and short experience in cryptocurrency, recent corrections usually halt around the 30 - 50% range, which theoretically could mean around USD 70 for ETH, or thereabouts.
I think I can live with that.
I think I'll hodl out this wave, just like kmarc said.

What do you mean you got reported?
Reported where and by whom?

Anyway, I see the date of the article is 22nd May 2017. How do they have an article for 22nd May if we just started the day and New York hasn't even reached 22nd May yet?
Or is it a pre-written unreleased article that someone managed to get and leak out?

Hahaha......
Well, look at it this way, one year ago, if someone were to have told me that there is this "investment vehicle" that I put money into in order to buy some "digital money" that I will not get anything physically to hold, just some strings of numbers and alphabets, and will get 500 - 1000% profit in two months...... dude I would have reported that lunatic too.


Oh well, at least you tried to spread the word.
That's all we can do.

We all feel the same, mate.
And I suspect that some of us might really have done that even. Looking at the recent prices, they made the right decision!

VPN not required.
If you are a Malaysian, all you need is a Malaysian bank account, and a computer with an internet connection.
And money.......you need money.

Uh......I don't think that's what he meant.
He's just asking for a simple and easy-to-understand explanation to smart contracts.

For example, you see the price is 30 cents, and you clicked buy, assuming that you will be paying 30 cents for the coin.
However, due to internal controls, the transaction was put on hold and did not complete, and was only completed later when the price had increased to 1 dollar.
So, effectively, you thought you were buying the coin at 30 cents, but finally had to pay 1 dollar for it.
And the online exchange gets a percentage of your transaction based on the amount, meaning the higher the transacted amount, the higher their profits.

Both ETH and BTC are at their All Time Highs, both are possible to face corrections.
If you are thinking of converting to some other altcoin, then maybe it is worth considering since you can get some on the cheap.
But if only between BTC and ETH, then looking at the scenario, I personally would not recommend switching one for the other.
Just my personal opinion.

You should talk to kmarc.
He claimed to have that "superpower" as well.

With so many big conglomerates jumping onto the Ethereum bandwagon, I think it is getting too big to fail.
They will make it work somehow.

I'm betting big on both BTC and ETH.
I'm greedy that way.

Since Japan is one of the biggest adopters of bitcoin as legal tender, try thinking of your holdings in terms of Japanese yen.
You'll feel much better.

The last time I transferred from my hardware wallet to Poloniex, it only arrived after 9 days.
I hope you have better luck than I did.

Yes, exactly like a mugshot.
This is now becoming an industry-wide practice among all large online exchanges, in an effort to weed out money laundering (or the large scale ones, anyway).
You guys are really big players.
USD 2k *per day* is plenty enough for small ikan bilis like me......

Wishing I had a Korean bank account right now...... ETH is trading above USD 240 on Korean exchanges.

Aaaannndddd......here comes the panic sellers on ETH trying to cash in their profits.
Look at that bright red candle...!

In many countries, bitcoin and other altcoins usually sell at a premium.
I have found that Malaysia is usually about 3 - 5% higher than the global average, sometimes even up to 8%.
Countries like Japan and Korea can go even higher than that.

Don't go for localbitcoins.
Go for either Xbit Asia or Luno, usually better rates.
Otherwise you can also ask jack2 here on this thread.
He sells direct to the buyer, if you are comfortable with that.

Your actual buy price will be different from the Luno website price because the website only quotes the average buy/sell price.
Since Malaysia always has a premium price over the global average, I'm not totally surprised that it'd be around RM500 more expensive.
With the global average over RM9500 now, RM500 is just a little over 5% premium, which is not too bad, I think.
Try Xbit Asia also.