RE: Are we being herded like sheep to the slaughter?
Wow. What a mess they made of things. Everything paper no longer impacts me (except positively) due to the fact that I went cashless 2 years ago. No more banks! They can all slide slowly to the bottom of the ocean for all I care.
Here is what IS relevant. When Cypress fell, bitcoin quintupled. There is no room in bitcoin for all who will suddenly want out of paper when country after country realizes the house of cards is falling. The bitcoin network is slowing significantly. I notice it a lot as I am constantly trading - repeat. I don't hold paper cash!
Recently I dumped 20% of my btc, changing it over to steem, SBD, dash, gold, silver and supplies. I desperately want to hold my btc for the great inflow of buyers (at any price) that is coming. But when the network forces wait times of 2 and 3 hours, or just fails to confirm transactions, I don't want to have bitcoins alone.
Well done @sponge-bob. If more people followed your example things would turn very bad very quickly. Bitcoin certainly raised awareness and led the crypto-currency revolution. There are however a few unsavory crypto-currencies around and we suspect many people will be ripped off as they will panic and make an impulsive uninformed decision - always a bad combo. Gold, silver and a legit crypto-currency seem like the only viable options in a collapsing world.
I have seen so many lose lots of wealth. A friend lost 500 btc when it got locked up in MtGox. I saw that coming and told him to get out. He was kept in it by the "bandwagon" fallacy. "But... but, there are thousands of people all over the world in MtGox, and you know something they don't?" I was not the only one. I also got out of bitinstant, bitstamp, and bitfinex before things went sour. They are, after all, just web sites.
Just because everyone is doing something doesn't mean we should ignore common sense and the ability to observe the past and guess the near future. Duh.