What is the argument or evidence for this?

I agree with this analysis.

This is a great point. As I was trying to explain information asymmetry to a newbie as a rationale for a heavily bitcoin-weighted investment portfolio (as opposed to a more traditional diversified portfolio), it occurred to me that there are two implications. Assuming that I am a long-term bitcoin bull, a hodl'er, who follows the space very closely and understands the fundamentals very well (all of which I believe to be true):

1) I am in a very GOOD position to profit from long term price RISES due to continued favorable fundamentals. This is because I am competing against the bitcoin non-owners of the world who will eventually appreciate how great bitcoin is, but they will be very slow on the uptake.

2) I am in a BAD position, relatively speaking, to benefit from price FALLS secondary to unfavorable fundamentals. This is because I am competing against the bitcoin owners of the world who will be able to digest bad news extremely quickly.

In my mind, the greatest threat to bitcoin as an investment is if something significantly better comes along. I have been following "bitcoin 2.0" projects (Ethereum, sidechains, etc) very closely and so far, I have not seen anything so far that appears likely to replace bitcoin. Indeed, things like sidechains will only strengthen bitcoin's fundamentals. But suppose something better did come along, and caused the value to bitcoin to plummet. Would I anticipate it faster than the market? Maybe -- after all, I follow this space VERY closely -- but then again maybe not, according to my above reasoning.

Thoughts?

explanation by molecular a few posts back makes the most sense to me. How else to explain that the USD swap offers dried up all of a sudden?

Right now, the swap offers are close to being ALL GONE. If that was the result of panic buying, the price would be going up by a huge amount, not down.

If the above explanation is true, then this is a bear trap, and we should expect the price to be rebounding up rather quickly

Swaps have reappeared all of a sudden. Price currently 641

The theory is that a mysterious someone on bfx with lots of BTC took up all the USD swap offers so that he could sell a bunch of BTC and crash the market, and the market would be unable to bounce back up. Then it would drift down a little more because there would be nothing to prohibit the panic sellers from selling. For a few minutes, that is. At which time he would buy back a bunch of btc. And then release the swap offers, which would allow other traders to borrow USD and send the market drifting back up.

I don't think you can lend borrowed USD on bfx. Not sure, but I would doubt it.

btw, any bears out there can make lots of $$ by lending USD on bfx at rates like 0.1% per day. That's PER DAY.

If my theory is true, I would expect it to drift back up slowly (slower than the crash from 680 to 620 or wherever), on low volume. So far that's what it is doing. Currently at 645 of bfx.

They were briefly back to normal, then dried up again so that 0.6% was the best you could get, now back to normal again ... moving faster than I can type this up ...

But if they were panic selling, the USD swaps would not have disappeared during the flash drop down

Yes. But more than that, the existing swaps would have had no reason to disappear. That should only happen if people are massively panic BUYing.

And yes, it could be the bfx people doing this, who knows? Or a bug in their system.

After thinking about it overnight, I think my initial explanation maybe was wrong, and the true explanation was perhaps a much less nefarious one. The flash crash could have been for whatever ("natural") reason (external to bitfinex), and the disappearance of the USD swaps could have been the result of limit purchase orders that got triggered by the price drop. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. (Probably because, despite my handle, I'm not actually a day trader.  )

The longer term your game, the more sure footed you will be.

Long term: log trendline is the most powerful model we've got. First, there is an explanation for why the model should work. Second, there are 5 years of data to support the model pretty darn well.

Medium term: cycles of boom-bust with a period of 200+ days. The data seems to fit this remarkably well. It's almost incredible to look at the charts and see how well spaced apart the peaks are. And it makes sense that there should be oscillations above and below the log trendline. But: why do the largest booms and busts come at that frequency? I don't know, and I don't know of any theories why it should be so, so that is a weakness of the medium term predictions.

Short term predictions: technical analysis. I've never studied TA but I've never seen a compelling reason to waste my time. There's just way too much voodoo and reading tea leaves.

So to sum up: Investment decisions should be based almost completely on long term thinking (log trendline model, supported by an understanding of the fundamentals). Some smaller decisions should perhaps be based on medium term thinking (like, we're below the trendline, and it's nearing time for the next boom). I don't think TA or any other short-term games should play a significant role at all in any investment decisions.


Yes, it is gambling! That's exactly right!!

Matt: You've got the intelligence. You just need some patience!! (My apologies ahead of time for the unsolicited advice  )

Actually, the log trendline model predicts that by 2027, one bitcoin will be so valuable, it will be able to buy all the rest of the bitcoins in the world several times over. But since each and every one can do that .... it will cause a massive black hole and we will get sucked into a brand new baby universe where the Laws of Physics will be encoded on the bitcoin blockchain. When that baby universe hits 14 billion years, it will happen again ... ad infinitum.

OTOH .... As an investor, what do you pray for? You pray for a market where the fundamentals kick ass but for whatever reason, it's not (yet) reflected in the price. And here we are. 

bfx USD swaps are now at $18.7 million, down from, what -- $29 million a few days ago? (maybe longer ago than that, I don't remember). So that means that over $10 million worth of long positions got liquidated, which means something like 20,000 or 25,000 coins got sold in the process. Someone tell me if my back-of-the-envelope calculation is correct ...

So perhaps we could time the bottom if we can guess when the bfx longs will be through doing what they gotta do?

EDIT: This is assuming that the closing out of the bfx longs is the major driver for the recent downturn from 600 to 460.

How frequently does it get updated?

btc-e has been rising over the past 3 hours, from 430 to 445, closing the gap between it and everyone else. Not sure what's going on there but a return to some normalcy sure would be nice ...

Are you aware that "cut your loose" is not a recognized expression in the English language?

One of the widely recognized (I think) elements of the "grand model" is that the timing of the fluctuations above and below the log trendline are not actually expected to be predictable. The log trendline has an explanation that makes sense; but I've never seen anyone offer a theory to explain why bubbles ought to be spaced apart at regular intervals. So if they're not spaced out at regular intervals, there's no reason to abandon the rest of the model.


EDIT: Don't think I said that very well. What I meant was that the timing of the bubbles is not an essential part of anybody's grand model afaik.

Ahh yes I had not seen that. Must be on purpose ...

I figured it out ... "cut your loose" is actually code for "cut loose" which means "to behave in a way that is free and relaxed, especially when you are enjoying yourself" [1]
See, for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjqfGe_80Ck
Cut loose, footloose, kick off your Sunday shoes ....

[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cut+loose

Everyone is taking your advice to
CUT LOOSE!
FOOTLOOSE!

And once those two join you, you can all have a party where you will
CUT YOUR LOOSE!
FOOT YOUR LOOSE!

Another thing John can do is to close his position incrementally as the price approaches $575. For example, his plan might be that if the price hits $545, he'll close 1 BTC. That means he would buy 1 BTC at $545 to pay off part of his debt. This will have the effect of raising the margin-call price. This is called stop-loss, correct? (I am not a trader and learning this stuff on the fly)

I don't think aminorex is trying to say or imply anything about the fraction of consultants who know bitcoin.

+1

Study game. It takes work but will be very much worth it. The women in your life will thank you.

ps You don't need money and you don't need looks, although they make things easier. Game trumps everything.

You clearly don't know what someone like Neil Strauss or Nick Savoy actually means by "game," and I take issue with basically every single point in your post. But if you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.

+1

There is outer game, and there is inner game. Outer game refers to the superficial stuff and it's what most people imagine when they first hear about pick-up. Inner game refers to the fundamental stuff -- who you are, what you have to offer, what you want out of relationship(s), what you want out of life. You can work on one at a time but eventually you want outer game and inner game to be congruent. Ultimately, game is not about manipulation and deception - it's about communication, honesty, and respect.

There are many paths to enlightenment. If game does not resonate with you, then perhaps it is not your path. But that doesn't mean it's not someone else's path. No need to be hatin'.

If you are interested in the fate of bitcoin over the next 5-20 years, not just the next few minutes, hours, days, weeks or months, then looking at the last 5 years of price data is more informative than shorter time spans simply because it encompasses more data. It's a question of forest versus the trees.

The burden of proof should be on you to justify why you emphasize a slightly-less-than-one-year timeframe. Other than that it supports a bear argument.

Apparently so 

Quarter contracts close at the end of the quarter. You can hold them past any given Friday as long as that Friday is not the end of the quarter.

no prob

The blogpost doesn't say who selected them for this role.

Buying lightly on the way down

My play's not over yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWJXDG2i0A

I wonder if Tom Petty uses bitcoin ....

Freddie King, Going Down. Never heard that song. It certainly fits.

How about this one by Aerosmith:

Edit: fixed the link, added the lyrics

I'm a long term bull. Crashes like this one are GLORIOUS.

Huge, like 2M buy wall at about 200 on stamp just vanished.

How many btc do you think it would take to execute one of these four punch raids?

a few hundred thousand -- that's quite a few coins I think. Unless you mean a few hundred thousand on leverage, which would only require an order of magnitude less in starting capital.

Surely they don't risk all of their capital every time. One miscalculation or piece of bad luck and you get wiped out.

If these traders really know what they're doing, they probably have a stash of USD in reserve just in case the bounce needs a little help, wouldn't you think? A simple bump to $240 right about now would go a long way towards keeping hope (and by hope I mean their sheep) alive.

I'm trying to spot these patterns you mention. Tell me if these are some of the corresponding dates:
crash on Feb 25, 2014 (spike on Mar 3, 2014)
crash on Apr 11, 2014 (spike on Apr 14, 2014)
crash on Oct 6, 2014 (spike on Oct 9, 2014)

In past FPR raids, how much time is it between the crash and the spike? A few days?

I've been thinking the same thing:

Are you really not following what billyjoeallen is saying, lambchop? Or are you being deliberately obtuse? Like in this video (jump straight to 3:30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IrCgt-Bt1I

It's from one of the greatest movies of all time, the Shawshank Redemption: "How can you be so obtuse? Is it deliberate?"

I'm pretty sure you are being deliberately obtuse, thus making it pointless for me to direct you to some dry and didactic video. I'm just hoping that even obtuse trolls enjoy movies ....

In case you missed it, these are the words:
You (notlambchop) are being deliberately obtuse.

My intention was not to answer your questions. I think billyjoeallen was doing an excellent job without my help. You otoh appear to be misunderstanding the points he is making and doing so intentionally. That's what it means to be "deliberately obtuse." If you want your questions answered, you need to stop doing that.

Intertubes?

This type of thing (I'm sure there will be other services similar to tether) will be a game changer -- IF the entities backing the funds prove trustworthy.

Another example of a shoddily-written article on bitcoin by the mainstream media.
- The article seems to imply that Mt Gox went bankrupt because its owner, Jason Karpeles, could not mine enough bitcoin to pay off his loans. wtf??
- The article points out that bitcoin is good for mainstream uses, being accepted by places like Amazon and CVS, and bad for buying drugs, because of its traceability. These things are true, but it makes one wonder whether the author couldn't remember whether he was writing a pro-bitcoin or an anti-bitcoin article.
- If the author were actually trying to delve into why anyone would use bitcoin for non-drug related purposes (e.g. on Amazon), he would have pointed out that you can get 3% cash back if you go through gyft, more than enough to cover the spread (you lose 1 to 1.5 % on the spread when you purchase bitcoin from coinbase at the same time that you purchase the amazon gift card). EDIT: Plus you don't have to worry about your credit card info getting stolen from Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, Starbucks, or any of the other places accepted by gyft.

I think you've been able to buy and sell bitcoins on coinbase since its inception. I don't know what the different limits are but I know for a fact that (as early as 2013 when I opened an account) it has been possible to send coins to coinbase, sell them, and have the USD deposited in your bank account.

No fuckin way. TGTBT that McD would be advertising bitcoin ...

You've given me an idea:

Someone should use Ethereum to create a pump n dump. Anyone who wants to participate sends bitcoin to a prespecified address. Once a threshold number of bitcoin are accumulated, Ethereum executes the pump n dump and disburses the profits accordingly. If the threshold is not met by a specified time, the bitcoins are returned to the investors. All of this is executed in fully transparent and trustless fashion by the magic of Ethereum.

Billyjoeallen, I nominate you to design the pump n dump strategy. 

OKcoin is down

OKcoin is back up now

okcoin down again

In the past few hours (after the news of the a-Greek-ment) BTCUSD looks a helluva lot like EURUSD.

Like asking who that masked man was ....



He was the Lone Ranger.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-behind-bitcoin-could-transform-how-economy-works-trust-machine

 

Chinese stock market collapse; Chinese gov't adopted a more favorable stance on bitcoin; European court ruled that bitcoin is VAT free. Those are some pretty freakin' big straws imho.

I think all of us bulls should take this opportunity to short the market. All together. They'll never see it coming. Midnight EST. Who's with me???

I'm sure we could knock it down 10% in half an hour. Take profit and then go long again. 

Yes! We admit die-hard bulltards only.


EDIT: But we wouldn't pump, only dump (short) once or twice during the parabolic rises. We know there will have to be some corrections. The only question is when. So the theory is that if we go short, it will create a disturbance in the force that would DEFINITELY trigger a correction. Foolproof, eh?

(EDIT 2: I'm joking, for those who can't tell.)

The Ferengi dude in Star Trek: DS9 used to do this sorta thing. "Every now and then, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies."

Yeah but when it does, I'm gonna claim all the credit. 

This is one of those statements that can be defended, if necessary, on the grounds that it is tautologically true, although it is presented as if it were a synthetic truth and not a tautology.

You must have a philosophy background.

OKCoin futures just shy of $380

Just as planned: 3 month longs on OKCoin dropped from 380 to 350 between 12:44 AM and 1:14 AM, EST.

Good job crew!!!!!

Then the question becomes what the implied USD/CNY exchange rate on the btc exchanges is in a calm and boring sideways btc market as opposed to what we have seen over the past few days.

400 on 'stamp

Anybody know the bitcoin record for % increase in 24 hours?

With leveraged trading, anyone can go long and anyone can go short. Prior to leveraged trading, anyone could "go long" because going long meant exchanging fiat for bitcoin, and 100% of traders have fiat. Conversely, going short meant selling bitcoin for fiat, and the percentage of traders with bitcoin was way less than 100%. If you did not hold any bitcoin and you wanted to short it, then you'd have to buy some first before you could dump it on the market. Make sense?

EDIT: The creation of leveraged trading was therefore necessarily bearish for bitcoin. I wish I had understood that two years ago lol ...

Going from long:possible;shorting:impossible to long:possible;short:possible is a big deal regardless of the various limits ... right?

Here's DanV talking about a spike to the $700 - $720 area

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/DlxDNrQ6-Bitcoin-In-Double-Zigzag-Correction-Bullish-Bias/

It might make more sense to think of it this way: value does reflect Supply vs Demand, and Demand can be divided into two sources:
1. demand from people who buy it for the sake of speculation
2. demand from people who buy it to use it for non-speculative purposes (i.e. as a currency)

You can subdivide its purposes further of course if you wish.

Us old timers would think that with bitcoin at an almost 4 year high, it should be fluctuating wildly. Up 20% one hour, down 30% the next day, that sorta thing. But the price for a long time now has been ROCK SOLID. It's climbing, but slowly and steadily.

Just proves, once again, that Honey Badger don't care about anyone's expectations.

$801* been hit on poloniex

* tether-USD

798 on GDAX! so close!

Are you perhaps looking for a graph done by Stephen Reed? See this very nice 2013 thread of his:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=366214.0

Vinny Lingham

EDIT:
https://news.bitcoin.com/lingham-notice-800s-bitcoin-price/

897 been hit on OKcoin

This is an excellent strategy, imho, because you actually profit from volatility. IOW, a volatile price rise from A to B will leave you richer than a steady rise from A to B. You (the investor) win, at the expense of the speculators.

If you assume price = constant + superimposed sinusoidal curve, with the amplitude of the curve big enough to trigger buying and selling, then by your method, you repeatedly buy low, sell high, over and over again. Which means you make money, assuming the spread and transaction costs are less than what you earn from buying low and selling high.

Any curve can be represented as a sum of sinusoidal curves, i.e. a Fourier series. Therefore, it becomes mathematically provable that your method, if properly implemented, will cause you to benefit from volatility.

A bot would definitely be nice for this kind of thing. When you see volatility, everyone else would be having a heart attack, and you could just sit back, think about your bot making money from the volatility plus the fact that you're making the world a better place by decreasing volatility, and smile



I've never done the proof formally, but the statement to be proved would be something along these lines:
- assume X% allocation bitcoin, and 100-X % allocation fiat at the beginning
- assume price starts at $A and ends at $B, with arbitrary path from A to B
- assume zero spread and zero fees (makes the math simpler, but you'd have to bear in mind this is an oversimplification of the model)
Strategy 1: no buying and no selling at all
Strategy 2: if your percent allocation of wealth in bitcoin rises above or below X% by some fixed amount D (let's say, +/- 5%) due to bitcoin price fluctuations, then buy or sell as needed to keep the % allocation within X +/- D %.

For example: if you set X at 50% at the beginning and D at 5%, then your bot will buy or sell as needed to keep your percent allocation within the range of 45% to 55%

The proof would basically say that Strategy 2 works better than Strategy 1. I think a few more assumptions are needed though. I'm not sure, but I think Strategy 2 is better if we assume that neither bitcoin nor the fiat becomes worthless. Suppose, for example, that the fiat hyperinflates a la Zimbabwe in 2009 or whenever. In that case, Strategy 2 would definitely be a BAD idea, because by the end you would have sold all your bitcoin and you'd have a zillion Zimbabwean dollars worth nothing. But if we assume the fiat currency stays stable, and bitcoin goes to the moon but does so in a very volatile fashion, then I'm pretty sure Strategy 2 can be proven to be superior.

EDIT:
Actually I might also have to assume that you start and end at the same price. Obviously if the price of bitcoin shoots up to $1M, you're better off if you didn't sell any of it at all during the rise, which means Strategy 1 would be better.

Percentages would definitely be the way to go, and the optimal percentages would depend on how wide you expect the price fluctuations to be. For example: if you expect LOTS and LOTS of +/- 10% fluctuations, then you're better off buying at the -10% and selling at the +10%. Suppose you model lots of +/- 3% fluctuations with very infrequent +/- 50% fluctuations ... in that case your idealized bot would probably have a pretty complex behavior. Deriving what exactly the ideal bot should do would be a very interesting exercise.

Also, you have to take into account:
- risk of exchange getting hacked
- tax implications of selling
- exchange fees and spread

I bet someday someone is going to build a bot using ethereum (or some such tool) that will do this automatically using peer to peer exchanges. Of course that can't happen until:
- p2p exchanges gain more traction
- we can move fiat around on the blockchain (like Tether-USD, but with a more established backer and a larger market cap)

Cool. I played around with a similar google spreadsheet a while back. Yours looks a whole lot more polished than mine

Mine started out as my own modification of the Sane and Simple Bitcoin Savings Plan. Conceptually, right now, my idea would be to create a bot that does the following: whenever X bitcoin is sold at price P for D dollars, create a list of buy orders spread out over a wide price range which, when totaled, would use the entirety of the D dollars to buy back X + a little extra bitcoin. Example: if the algorithm sells 1 btc at $1000, it automatically places buy orders for $200 worth of bitcoin at prices $900, $800, $700, $600, and $500. If the price falls all the way to $500, then you will have used up the entire $1000 to buy back bitcoin at a cheaper price. You can make it as granular as you think the bot and the system can handle. The interesting problem becomes: what is the ideal way to distribute the buybacks? The answer should be determined by what you expect the volatility to be, so that you can maximize how much you profit from volatility. If there is zero volatility (steady rise to the moon), you're basically just implementing the SSS.

One other thing: whenever you buy bitcoin, your bot should do the same thing in reverse, i.e. it should create a spectrum of price points where you sell it all back, but at higher prices. From an algorithmic standpoint, just flip the BTC/USD pair and treat buying btc as if you are selling USD.

Obviously we don't know what the price curve is going to be in the future. That's not the point. The point is that if the price starts at f(t_0) = X and ends at the same price f(t_1) = X, and in between it has lots of ups and downs, then this method will increase the end-value of your total holdings (expressed in BTC or in $). It doesn't matter what f(t) does in between. You don't have to know ahead of time what f(t) is going to do. The demonstration of this statement makes use of the fact that f(t) = the sum of lots of sine waves, for any f(t). This is true even if we don't know ahead of time what exactly f(t) is.

Good question.

I've seen the argument put forth (Andreas perhaps?) that China will ultimately be unable to ban bitcoin, because enforcement takes place at the local level, and local police can be bribed. Imagine being a clandestine miner siphoning power illegally from a power plant in China, being told by a local enforcer you have to stop. Unless you give me half your bitcoin. Mined using free (stolen) electricity. What's gonna happen? The enforcer is going to HELP the miner steal the power.

I'm not sayin' that a Chinese ban wouldn't be bad for the price, at least short term. I'm just sayin' ... bitcoin is too far out of Pandora's box to put back in place, and maybe, just maybe, the relevant Chinese PTB know this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDW6vkuqGLg
Go to 1:15

I just did a test btc withdrawal from coinbase. Broadcast and confirmed without a problem.

This is a good question, one that I have been thinking about.

Vinny Lingham predicts a slow and steady rise to 2k-3k during 2017. His judgement seems as good as anyone's to me. But I agree there's no way in hell we're gonna go slow and steady to 100k, or even 10k. And yes I'm thinking in log axis. Suppose price multiplies by 2.5 x per year. Five years of that would get us to 100k. But can you imagine that actually happening? Once that pattern establishes itself, someone who thinks in terms of years is gonna try to frontrun it and will be willing to buy at a premium, short term traders will see that happening, the price will go parabolic, everyone will know it's day traders responsible for the short term parabolic rise and will try to front-run them cashing out, big crash, and there you have it. So if it's truly going to the moon, I think it's safe to assume that it will be a volatile ride all the way to the top.

Hmm, that gives me an idea on how to model the magnitude of the swings. If you knew how many speculators there are (in terms of how much capital they are working with) and what time frames they are working in (long term investors or "long-termers," minute to minute day traders of "short-termers," and everything in between), and the first people to go long are the long-termers and the last to go long are the short term day traders, with the in between being the in between, then the parabolic rise ends when the progression from long termers to short termers runs out.

My thought process is partially inspired by the thought process Mike Burry used to predict the timing of the housing market crash. There's a video online somewhere of a lecture he gives. Basically, banks were making it easier and easier and easier and easier to get a loan. When they ran out of tricks, then there was no more new money getting into the system, and that's when it crashes. Turns out he was right.

In this case, to do the calculation, we'd need to have some data that I'm not sure how to come up with. Basically, something like a graph where the x-axis represents the time frame that the trader is looking at / working in (minutes, hours, days, ..., years) and the y-axis is how much capital is allocated to any trading strategy dealing in that time frame (summed over all traders).

EDIT: Suppose that S(T) is the strategy that a trader would use who works and thinks in terms of timeframe T. (e.g., T = 1 hour for a trader who makes trades based on the hourly charts.) A key assumption would be that the goal of strategy S(T) is to front-run strategy S(T+something). For example, the goal of a trader who looks at the 5-minute charts is to front run the traders who are looking at the 10-minute charts.
 

I don't know if I would call it good or bad ... merely inevitable.

Or I suppose what you are saying is that a certain degree of uncertainty is to be expected in a properly functioning market, and is therefore evidence of a properly functioning market. So if we went through a period without the volatility .... that would be a bad thing? hmmm. just thinking out loud.

I wonder if there's a way to calculate what the "expected" amount of volatility should be. I've often wondered whether that might be related to the average spread on the exchanges: smaller spread would enable profitable trading on higher frequency, lower amplitude swings, which in turn would allow (by the reasoning above) parabolic swings to go steeper +/- higher before they burst ...

OK, I got it.
1) Quantify the average spread on the available exchanges.
2) Derive a formula that allows you to calculate the expected volatility based on average spread.
3) Profit.
Lol. Not sure how to profit on that yet ...

gold 1249.89, finex already reached 1212 ...

I have a vision of honey badger strolling casually past gold, like it's just another day in the life 

There are two ways to think about the relationship between market cap and how much "real money" is invested into bitcoin.

1) short term. ECB is correct to point out that an injection of 25 billion dollars of "real money" would drive the price to the moon in the short term, due to liquidity issues.

2) long term. If you think in terms of steady state conditions, then cmacwiz's reasoning makes perfect sense.

haha we think alike:

done

Seemed like they were laughing more at the idea of a bitcoin ETF than at bitcoin itself. I actually think he made some good points.

https://twitter.com/VinnyLingham/status/835145632998387713

EDIT: for instance, he says in the Bloomberg video that it makes more sense to buy bitcoins directly than to buy the ETF. Gotta agree with that, no?

even btc-e has hit 1242.

Ask them if the price drops, at what price will they decide to sell. Like if it drops back to $200 are they going to sell. If they say yes then tell them they have to be prepared to ride it ALL THE WAY TO ZERO without selling. If they're not ready to do that, I would say I won't help them because the only certainty is that it's going to be VERY volatile.

I did help a friend buy some in 2014 at $600, who sold at just over $200 because he couldn't stomach the drop. Never again.

To what extent does your analysis rest on the assertion that bitcoin can


?

Because that is really not a fair summary of the situation. Which I am sure you know without me telling you. But I wonder whether your analysis is fully settled (in your own mind) ...

True. And we should also keep in mind that it can be a bit presumptuous of us to expect someone to invest into what would appear to them to be a get-rich-quick scheme (or get rich slow ... whatever), something that they have absolutely NO comprehension of, based purely on ONE person's belief that it's the next big thing. Try to imagine how it would feel if the tables were reversed.

wait, wait ... something feels wrong ... something's not quite right ... OMG, I just realized: I haven't checked the bitcoin price in nearly FIFTEEN MINUTES!!! How could I have let that happen!!!?!?!?!

What else is a guy gonna do huh? lol

Poetry it is!  

Although these are written to the tune of The Highwayman, by The Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson). For anyone who's never heard it, take a listen, it's an awesome song.

You can do that with a ledger s nano, no need to sacrifice a laptop.
1. Set it up, and record the 24 words in cryptosteel.
2. Write down the first receipt address.
3. Wipe the ledger.
4. Go to recovery mode and re-enter the 24 words.
5. Check to make sure the first receipt address is the same. If it is, you know you've recorded them in cryptosteel without error.

You can do something similar with a Trezor but you have to type the words into a connected laptop. If compromised, the bad guys will know your 24 words (although they won't know which order to put them which means they won't be stealing your coins). It's the one thing that ledger has over Trezor.

If you really want to stick with Trezor, I'd say it's worth getting a nano just so you can verify the 24 words.

If lack of near unanimous consensus on a major decision is enough to kill bitcoin, then bitcoin was never a good idea to begin with.

Bitcoin was designed with the assumption that there will be major decisions that must be made even in the absence of near-unanimous consensus. In a way it will be good to have a contentious hard fork so we can see if bitcoin survives. Which it will, but not everyone will believe it until they see it. So better now than later.

You and I are using the word "consensus" to mean different things. You are saying (and I agree) that every peer in the network must agree on what is valid. In that sense, bitcoin requires, and in fact bitcoin currently runs on, 100% consensus. What I am saying is that right now the community has not reached "consensus" on how to scale. My point is that Satoshi's original vision did NOT assume that hard forks were impossible. Satoshi did NOT assume that everybody will always agree on the future direction of bitcoin. Satoshi did NOT assume that everything will be roses and that we will all get along.

In theory, the possibility of a contentious hard fork has always been part of the plan. If a contentious hard fork is enough to kill bitcoin, then Satoshi's vision was doomed from the start. I believe Satoshi's vision was not doomed from the start, and that a contentious hard fork will not kill bitcoin. But if it does, then we may as well learn it sooner rather than later and so we can focus our efforts on a modified governance mechanism (dash being an example of a modified governance mechanism).

If the first time that a contentious hard fork actually happens is 15 years down the road when everybody is using it, it would be very reassuring to look back and say "remember that scaling-debate contentious hard fork? We all thought it would kill bitcoin and it didn't. Therefore, no need for a worldwide economic panic this time."

Hashrate is the more relevant measure:
http://xtnodes.com/#bitcoin_classic_hashrate

^^^

Excellent advice and everyone should take it.

Also, less money on exchanges = less of a panic drop in price when the next inevitable exchange hack happens.

pretty soon we'll be able to buy THREE sandwiches ...

You talking about localbitcoins or p2p exchanges?

^ This.

Just you wait until the central banks start buying btc in a big way. We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

bfx goes from 1550 to 1473 in an instant, and then over half an hour climbs back to 1550 ... I'm no TA expert, what does that mean?

I think you're right, it's a bullish indicator. Whether someone did it on purpose or not, we see that the market's response to a mini flash crash is to go right back up, not trigger a bunch of panic sells

Also it's interesting to compare the exchanges. The biggest drop was bitfinex, followed by bitstamp. the rest of the exchanges didn't fall nearly so much. I'm sure there's some pro out there who can look at that and can infer useful information on the capacity of various arbitrage channels.

coffee? how about espresso with 5 shots:

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/VqrLQuby-Russian-Doll-five-nested-cup-and-handle-pattern/

That's an interesting question. If we could find a way to make mining truly decentralized, then it would be a greater threat. As things now stand, there are advantages to multiple chains, one of them being as a means to sidestep the Jihans of the world.

bitcoin has room for improvement in the fungibility department. LN should help with that but too early to know.

think we'll see a replay of 2013? like, 2013 with the decimal place moved over one? masterluc called for a target of little above $9k i think so that would fit ...  

I couldn't stop myself from telling friends and family about it starting early 2013. Several bought, and several even hodl'd, to their credit. One panic sold at a profit, another panic sold at a loss but then bought some alts and made up for his losses.

Only one family member reacted negatively. Venomously, you might say. That family member .... is the one economist of the family. I have to bite my tongue now during conversations with her. Go figure.

The one friend who bought (in 2013, at 400) and then panic sold (in 2014, at 600) is thinking of buying back in and wants my help doing so. Why now? Because the price is shooting up, like in 2013. He probably won't get around to it until $4000, and then he'll panic sell at 6000 on the way down after the 10k peak ... It's one reason that it feels kinda like 2013 to me now.

Haha nope. Husband is also an economist, but she's the Krugman of the fam, which I'm pretty sure she'd take as a compliment lol


Agree with everything you say. (I wouldn't be surprised if what you say about the world markets comes true, although I can't say I have any particular insight, or know whose opinion to trust on that matter ... )

It means the sellers are paying way more in trading fees than the buyers. SUCKERS!!!!  lol

I've starting telling those who ask for advice that they should not invest unless they are prepared to hodl all the way to zero and lose it all if necessary, otherwise they'll panic sell when the inevitable crash occurs.

it's intended to be written down raw, although of course there's no reason you can't scramble it in some fashion, like reverse the order of the words. or something more complex than that if you wish

There are still lots of people who know very little about bitcoin except that it's used by cybercriminals and it went bankrupt a few years ago when Mt Gox got hacked and all the bitcoins got stolen and the bitcoin CEO got arrested and it's a big scary black box as far as they are concerned. If they hear that the Mt Gox hacker got caught and the good guys are taming the wild beast, it will seem a little bit less scary. Bullish.

Where do we expect BCC demand to be coming from? Chinese? Jihan? Roger?

Don't worry, I'll super-reverse jinx it. You see, I'm kind of a big deal * ...

So let me go on record as saying that come August 1, the bitcoin price will crash. Why? umm, 'cause ... what roach said.

* lol

How about this time around, instead of destroying the status quo with all kinds of violence and figuring that the rest will take care of itself (like what George Bush tried to do in Iraq), we start out building and testing the better system. That's actually the beauty of the crypto revolution: we are building decentralized money and decentralized forms of governance first. Testing them out, one step at a time. When they are really working, there will be no need for a violent revolution. Existing systems will crumble under their own weight (e.g.: Venezuela) and better, decentralized systems will be already in place to take up the slack.

No need for war. Please.

So many things need to be built. This is an exciting time people!

I see decentralized reputation systems as a fascinating problem and a necessary ingredient for better governance systems. It will be built on top of decentralized identity which is just starting to become a reality.

Now you get to sit down and ask yourself: What Do I Really Really Truly Want to Do with My Life? *

Take all the time that you need composing your answer. Then go do it.

* as opposed to what the Masters have been telling you that you Should Be Doing

I bet there are quite a few bitcoin millionaires sitting quietly on the sidelines right now who will be (or are already) of similar mind, silently contemplating how to help crypto reach its full potential to make the world a better place.

My sense is that there is indeed lots of institutional money interested / eager to get into bitcoin, but not sure how exactly to do it. I doubt they're all going to figure it out in the space of a few weeks. This uptrend is going to be slower and steadier, but similar in magnitude, to 2013.

Why would you need to get paid? Assuming you don't need any more money ... why hold yourself back from doing something that provides purpose to your life just because you're "supposed to" do it a certain way? Says who?

All the money in the world, without any sense of purpose ... may as well be dead.


 

honey badger's cutting through the 3000s like piss through snow

I can understand that. I have several passion projects that I rotate through in my free time and I def enjoy the freedom to pick them up and put them down at will.

Question for me is: at what bitcoin price can I work on my passion projects full time? I think we're close (on a log scale) but not quite there yet. I suppose that's a question relevant for many people on this thread. Perhaps that could be a poll: at what bitcoin price will you quit your day job - or maybe keep working, but no longer care about the salary?

^^ This 

So apparently CoinDesk bitcoin price index says we've already touched $4000 ... ? Not sure how that happened based on bitcoinity which shows $3970s as current ATH in some major USD exchanges but nothing over that (unless I've missed something)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2017/08/12/bitcoin-surpasses-4000-reaches-another-milestone/#6e5a20f96a8c

Bitshares, one of the decentralized p2p exchanges, allows you to place limit orders. Of course, you'd have to trust USD-Tether or bitUSD or whichever fiat system you use. I've experimented with the system with small quantities and it seems to be working all right so far.

There's also Bitsquare (which I have not used) or Ripple's desktop gateway.

Some young chicks are totally into older guys.

Ever read The Game by Neil Strauss? That shit is real.

EDIT: "Game" can be learned, although it does take time and effort. Like learning a language. Try lovesystems.com  -- that stuff is not a gimmick. Perhaps ironically, you're learning how to communicate and represent yourself and what you want more honestly than your parents or teachers or priests or counselors will ever do.

Bear in mind your CPA probably knows 0.00001% what you know about crypto.

Gone as in sell all your crypto? I'd recommend the JJG method of selling in very small increments at a progression of price points. Don't do anything rash you will later regret ...

Haha this ^^

Or as Tormund wound say ...
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/54b9d718-3a1e-4cd0-88bb-9e8aa738870b#/rJchfLS1OW.copy

I like your method of selling small amounts at set price intervals. And paying very little attention to that voice that inevitably will say: damn, I shoulda bought more here, sold some there. We all know it's going up long term but short term predictions just cannot be relied upon.

My only deviation would be if it is clearly going parabolic, then maybe sell a little more than planned. Especially if masterluc is calling the top. But even then, I wouldn't deviate much from the plan. Even the master can be wrong.

I know you didn't ask for my opinion, but I figured I'd toss in my thoughts anyway ...

I wouldn't draw too many parallels between price action around segwit activation for litecoin vs bitcoin. There's a tiny but nevertheless worrisome chance -- especially worrisome to new investors -- that SegWit activitation in 8 days will trigger some unexpected software bug and cause some sort of technical disaster. So when SegWit activates and the first SW transaction propagates without mishap, that could be a little bullish. So same effect as bip141 lock-in, although maybe not as pronounced. Up until a few weeks ago, investors have been viewing litecoin as a hedge against the possibility of unending deadlock on the scaling debate. SW lockin and activation was less of a concern for litecoin than for bitcoin, relatively speaking (relative to the other forces driving litecoin price).

For context, I'm viewing this under the assumption that the current uptrend is fueled by institutional investors who are just now getting comfortable with bitcoin investing. So I try to interpret events from what I imagine their perspective to be.

ETF's result? ...

Forever. Lots of ETF history, was not sure what you were referring to. I usually think of the expression "buy the rumor, sell the news" as referring to a bullish development and communicating a sense of irony bc the price drops instead of rises once the bullish event happens. Winklevoss ETF denial was obviously not a bullish development. But I suppose the general idea is the same for bearish news, just in reverse. Price drops beforehand, then (ironically) rises after the bearish event. And the price dip after the Winklevoss ETF denial was much more brief and more shallow than most ppl expected (unless I misremember), so yeah I suppose it would count.

So could this be the same thing leading up to Aug 21? Yeah, I suppose it could. Although it doesn't seem to me that Aug 21 will be as big an event from a trading perspective as bip141 lock-in. The former is guaranteed (now), the latter was not until shortly before it happened.


 

What big mess are you talking about? SW has been thoroughly tested, unlikely to cause problems.

I suppose you're referring to the fact that bitcoin core 0.15.0 will be disconnecting nodes which run segwit2x but I can't find when that's supposed to happen ...

yes, with 5 shots of espresso

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/VqrLQuby-Russian-Doll-five-nested-cup-and-handle-pattern/

My guess is that it has to be considered a separate thing. My reasoning is this: suppose someone does the exact same trades as your friend does, but that person does NOT have an extra stash that is kept offline. In his case, it would make no sense to act as if the offline BTC were being sold (and bought back), bc he doesn't have any. So now the question becomes: does it make sense to treat the exact same trades one way for one person, and another way for another person? I would think probably not.

PS I'm no accountant, and this is not tax advice, blah blah blah.
PPS Hopefully I understood your question correctly. Correct me if I did not ...

I'll amend my previous answer to say it probably depends on the precise details of how the particular exchange in question operates. I agree with what you said about going long/short. e.g. on OKCoin, buying a long or a short is not the same as buying or selling bitcoin itself. But suppose you're on a different exchange, where going short means you borrow some btc and sell it. In that case, if you want to do FIFO, I suppose you could for accounting purposes use the cost basis of x btc sitting in your stash off-exchange.

I'm not sure that there even is a right way to do it, until the IRS issues some guidance. I pity the poor IRS agent who has to audit someone's taxes who did stuff on lots of exchanges. It's gonna be a nightmare. He's gonna have to know in great detail how each exchange works. I think at this point the best anyone can do is to make your best "good faith" attempt to calculate in a way that seems reasonable.

I've used it. Haven't found anything better yet. The guy who runs it is on bitcointalk (there's a thread from a few years ago where he announced the service, if memory serves)

I find it sickening too.

But I'd rather mock / laugh at them than feed the trolls. There's only so much time in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMQkV5cTuoY&feature=youtu.be

I'd love to see someone take that video clip, dub over "a million dollars" with "six thousand dollars," but keep it exactly as it is when he says "a billion dollars."
    

That's how we know we're not even close to the top.

Guys, everyone should do this:

1. Buy a ledger.
2. Generate a new wallet and write down the 24 words. (maybe even put them into a cryptosteel)
3. write down the first BTC address of the new wallet
4. Erase the ledger.
5. Recover the wallet from your 24 words.
If the first BTC address is the same as the one in step 3, then you know you wrote the 24 words down correctly. Wallet is now safe to use.

I paid 19 btc if I remember correctly in 2013 (currently over $350k) for a brick from Butterfly Labs. 

I agree 100%. In retrospect, we all coulda/shoulda/woulda mortgaged our homes and maxed our credit cards and gone long at exactly the right time on apple/microsoft/amazon and everything else that has done well in the stock market. And we should have shorted all of the drops at exactly the right time. Never-ending list of such decisions we did not make. So what?

So BCH price on GDAX is at $3099. But it's frozen. People can place limit orders but no market orders. In other words, the $3099 price on GDAX is set on ZERO VOLUME.

And the $3099 price CANNOT BUDGE until GDAX opens up market orders, which they will do at exactly ... no one knows except Brian Armstrong and company.

For some reason, the BCH price on poloniex zoomed to pretty near 3099 about forty minutes ago, AFTER the price was set to 3099 on GDAX, and has hovered there.

WTF?



Somehow, a MEANINGLESS price on GDAX has somehow

Mr Pollock ended with this: " I don't think it [future forms of currency] will be a privately issued fiat currency like bitcoin"
Not sure if he meant it, but sounded like he called bitcoin a privately issued fiat currency. Hwa??

In my opinion this is exactly the right way to do it if you're a long term bull. And assuming you don't have to sell sooner to pay the bills.

Although when it came time for me to sell during the 20k run-up, I sold less than my plan told me to. You know what stopped me? The thought of triggering capital gains.

Take a look at this analysis of the March 2013 accidental hard fork and the convo of core devs and others on the bitcoin-dev mailing list:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/

It's clear from that conversation that Gavin's instincts were not as sharp or quick as those of some of the other core devs (Luke and Peter). If it had been Gavin by himself, I wonder if the fork would have been fixed as quickly as it was.

Looking back at that incident, I would perhaps be quite embarrassed by that conversation if I were Gavin. I wonder if he knew as early as March 2013 (if not earlier) that his days as lead dev were numbered. Maybe felt some resentment?

You'd also have fatty liver. 

Better off buying ETH. Even if you somehow managed to buy it precisely at the ATH ...