Had me scared for a few minutes there, I thought the party was coming to an end

No weekend dip because the crash left plenty of fiat in the exchanges. People don't have to wait until Tues/Wed for their bank transfers to clear.

Never a dull day at MtGox HQ. The DDoSers must be milking every last chance before the big exchanges at CoinLab and CoinSetter arrive, and before BitStamp gets bigger. Once there is more than one big exchange, DDoS of any one will have much less effect. Meanwhile the entire system grows stronger every time it is attacked, with the attackers being rewarded for their services in strengthening the system, effectively paving the way for further growth.

Without the attacks that have been occurring at a billion-dollar market cap, Bitcoin wouldn't be ready for the kinds of attacks that will come at ten and a hundred billion dollars.

Reading this thread:

OMG shit's getting dicey


Check Bitcoinity:

Huh? Nothing's changed. Price moves are completely boring.


However, I will say that the lack of the usual mid-week rally seems short-term bearish, especially if the price doesn't shoot up in the next hours.

For perspective, though, we are still quite a ways above the 2013 exponential trendline, which now sits at $100. It will take another five weeks before that line reaches $200, so there's nothing alarming about meandering around the current price point or even dipping to $100 - or even temporarily a little lower if there's a good excuse (news/crisis).

Wake me up if we leave the $100-$150 range.

Yeah, lag can happen. It's an X-factor (news/crisis). Hopefully Gox has it under control this time.

EDIT: Lag now 8 minutes

On the plus side, this may be a good opportunity to see whether hands have gotten stronger since the last wave of DDoS attacks. We'll learn if people have really become less panicky, and whether Gox has gotten better at handling it and communicating about it.

EDIT2: Lag back down to 3 minutes, price holding pretty steady so far at $132-ish.

EDIT3: Lag is gone, price is steady. So far.

Back to normal? No lag, no price change. Confidence-inspiring - if it lasts.

I did like the "hardcore" gif, though.

I'm going to have to agree with Arepo here, though for perhaps different reasons/phrasing: It's the end of Wednesday in Japan and no spike.

Looks like reversion to the exponential trendline at $100. Might dip a bit below first.

Hard to really make a good prediction when lag is such a huge factor, and lag seems to be completely unpredictable.

I don't know what theory of why people are investing in Bitcoin you're operating under, but it is entirely alien to me. People will "get tired" of faster-than-exponential growth since January? They'll get tired of more than doubling every five weeks since January if it goes down to merely doubling every five weeks (i.e., $100 right now)?

I think Chamath is bigger news. He's a one-man PR machine. Oh, plus that whole China thing.

Barring decisive good or bad news, my best guess is we slide sideways in the range for a while (maybe a week or two), since there seem to be hard caps both on the upside and the downside for the short term: below $100 = instant buy, above $130 or $150 = strong incentive to take some profits since people remember the pain of being burned by the bubble.

After that, start to move toward $200.

Fastest ignore ever

I know this is the Wall Observer thread so it comes with the territory, but many or most people here simply seem over-antsy. Few humans are psychologically equipped to follow day-to-day price changes without freaking out and losing money because of it. The tendency is to start reading into every little thing.

He's talking about mBTC. In other words a million dollars per bitcoin as peak valuation.

Not that this is the rally, but since I happen to be looking at the price now...

122

This ChartBuddy thing should be posting like every five hours instead of every hour. Or tie the posting speed to volatility.

Let that spring coil just a little longer. Note how amazing a buying opportunity we have now with this shower of continuous good/great news and minimal price reaction. This time you don't even need to try to catch a falling knife. Easy, low-risk gains for the non-clueless.

Inflation would be priced in, since the Nikkei is denominated in yen. It would just make the index go higher. Also, a 7% drop in the entire index is huge. That means many stocks fell much further.

Prediction:

We start pounding at $150's door over the coming week, then bust out quite a bit higher, topping $200 by June 15.

Easy:

1) A whale wanted in with no slippage (huge bid wall)

2) Eventually another whale who wanted to take a large, no-slippage profit seized the opportunity

3) The market overreacted to the whale mating as expected (whales prefer to mate with no slippage)

4) Nice buying op (window closing fast)

People in this thread are so frickin' jumpy.

I suggest never looking at Bitcoinity at anything less than the 30-day scale, unless you're about to make a trade, and always look at the long-term charts afterward to maintain some perspective.

Note that I didn't mean you shouldn't ever take profits. Just...people panic way too easily.

"Scientific consensus." LOL! Science has absolutely nothing to do with consensus.

You got that right. Just about everything I learned at university I later found out was partly or completely wrong, or "not even wrong," just plain incoherent wordspinning.

What's most amazing is that everyone knows government subsidies make a business lazy, bloated, inefficient, and cause it to optimize for playing little games to rope in endless amounts of additional funding. Yet no one notices that this is exactly what universities do, at least whenever they can get away with it. Engineering is perhaps the only subject where it's a bit harder to get away with this and you might actually learn something. Building bridges that crumble is kind of bad PR after all.

This isn't to say college is a waste of time; go for the socializing, sex, partying, connections, and conversations with smart people, skip the classes unless you have a morbid interest in mainstream BS (or if you want to familiarize yourself with it for debating purposes). If you want to learn, at the very least do so in a context where you can get plenty of conflicting voices, like a relatively unmoderated forum. A lecture hall is antithetical to this, even if they were teaching something real and not state-sponsored, like Austrian economics.

Also the 2011 bubble inflated much higher, much faster, for much less reason. This time there was a lot of reason for a decent rise, and it rose less and slower. It just makes sense that it would fall less far in the aftermath.

Bored traders were tired of the flatlining so started some weekend fun.

Dumps happened not only on consecutive Sundays but at about the same time both Sundays. If it's manipulation, this becomes a nice predictable pattern to trade from. Sunday/Monday becomes the day to buy.

Exactly. It's kind of nice to just have a random selloff, not caused by lag or news, because it makes for easy money if you some spare fiat at the ready.

It certainly has the markings of price manipulation.

If it's a soundbyte you have to use the common definition, but if you have more time I'd say it's definitely worth it to alert people to the doublespeak in their definitions. People will eventually catch on that every key word needs to be investigated and used carefully.

This is true in every field, even investing and Bitcoin generally.

Until people learn to think about what a word is trying to convey rather than what a word "really means," they'll never have any chance of thinking clearly. Ayn Rand was wrong: the most important question we can ask about something (X) isn't, "What is X?" But rather, "What are we trying to get at by saying 'X'?" Instead of treating words as communication tools, people tend to fetishize them, getting stuck on the "actual meaning" of a word as if such a thing existed.

Governments take advantage of this tendency in order to conflate "criminals" (those who break legislated law) with bad people, "crimes" (breaking their laws) with breaking the very rules that allow society to function, their legislated "law" with natural customary law (http://mises.org/journals/scholar/hasnas.pdf). This semantic obfuscation is as insidious as it is powerful and should be confronted whenever possible, in all fields.

No more Bitcoins for sale?!

Because:

I love how all the bears/bulls come out and act smug right when the price moves their way even it's for a reason none of them anticipated.  

Withdrawing Japanese yen from MtGox remains smooth and snappy, as of last week. Like 3-4 days.

Yeah, check my posting history.

Look at the charts over the past month. A pattern is becoming obvious. Someone wants in, at any cost.

They're trying not to push the price up too much, but the moment it simmers down a bit they push it right back up just under 150 so as not to induce panic buying. Some whale is building a position as aggressively as their caution will allow. It looks like they have a whole lot more to move. We are certainly not yet past the days where one whale trying to get in can double or triple the price. In fact, a true Great White could push it much higher than that. Who can say how far this will go? It's an open-ended proposition.

150 is a round number. Look at the market history this spring. It always did the battering ram maneuver on round numbers before busting through. Heave. Ho...

Therefore, a smart whale will keep buying on those pullbacks, milking the round figure for all it's worth before the ram breaks it down. This vigorous rise could continue for ages depending on how big of a position the whale is trying to take.

Holy smokes! When did China become a third of the total global exchange volume?!

And how fast are they coming up?

One problem with Japanese banks is their ATM cards don't work overseas. I don't know how well-known this is, but Mizuho Bank is an exception.

This means, I suppose, you could

1) come to Japan
2) snag a teaching job and a visa (doable in 1-2 months)
3) open a Mizuho Bank account (a few days)
4) quit and go to back to Europe
5) buy BTC on Bitstamp for cheap
6) sell on Gox for a premium
7) have Gox send the yen to your Mizuho Bank account (3-5 days)
8) then withdraw the cash from Mizuho with your ATM card in Europe
9) deposit the euros back into your European bank
10) Repeat steps 5 through 9

Re: the overvaluation contention, it means Falvinge doesn't understand investing very well. The whole point of investing is, in a sense, to figure out how much potential hard-to-ascertain value things have and boost the price accordingly. The rising price alerts others to what they weren't savvy enough to figure out themselves, then they herd in, of course always to excess, but leave the price in the end higher than it was. Investors do the hard work so others don't have to, smoothing out the volatility as well.

In other words, the price of Bitcoin is where it is in large part because people judge it to have a strong chance of being much more useful in the future. It seems like an amateur error by Falvinge to imagine that the BTC price should exactly match Bitcoin's present utility, rather than its present + potential future utility. By that logic, all venture capitalists are idiots.

Re: the price fixing accusation, it means Falvinge doesn't understand that only a government can fix prices for any significant length of time. If people are misled by painting the tape, they will lose money and wise up. "Fool me twice, shame on me." It's only a short-term effect.

According to MtGox's latest notice (viewable when logged in and trying to do a withdrawal), they are processing them steadily with a few weeks' delay.

Definitely a good thing for Gox to bleed market share, as long as they get their act together fairly soon. 30% Gox, 30% Bitstamp, 40% others would be a more robust infrastructure.

Same here. Losing money hand over fist, but don't feel like messing with my wallets. Bitcoin, you spoil me...becuse I know *yawn* that you'll eventually be back up after all this delicious drama.

SR was huge, economy-wise, but this isn't 2011. Bitcoin is now an official investment and those types will say good riddance to SR, will be waiting to sweep up the cheap coins.

I'm pretty sure we will go quite low in the short-term, but I also think Bitcoin has graduated SR. Let people react as they will; none of what makes Bitcoin promising has changed.  

In fact DPR posted his own email with his real name right in a forum post.

Wow. But why buy on a three-day weekend when the coins will dry up on exchange? Could be a pump, or maybe someone is just trying to push the price past $150 to break the monotony. It could work anyway.

Then again, if it's China-driven all bets are off. We could be ready to rocket.

From today at $152, we need about 19% growth per week to reach $1000 by year end, or 46% to reach $10,000.

To make it in time for Christmas, we need 21% or 52%, respectively. Since the latter goal at least is steeper growth than in the last run-up, it would take some kind of insane occurrence to reach the grand big prize. But these are insane times.

Lol, Feathercoin. The funny thing is, the Feathercoin guys seem to get that it's about the dev team more than the coin protocol. They're at least putting in the effort to hype their dev team and make it look inviting, which gives them an advantage over the other altcoins.

So we discovered the identity of the Chinese secret rocket. That is good. Wake me up when we hit $200.

When this puppy hits $169 we'll be at $2 billion market cap.

Market cap figures are of somewhat questionable meaning anyway, but that's what will get quoted in the headlines.

This part of the IMF document was striking:



They're basically saying the bail-in has to be a surprise in order for it to work properly. That means we shouldn't necessarily look to news developments for early warning. There's no one who can now think "it can't happen here" or "I'd know if it were about to happen" or "other less stable countries would do it first, giving early warning." No, this indicates it will probably happen all at once, in many countries or every country in a certain region on the same day. It could happen tomorrow afternoon. Are you ready? Or are you content to be a sheep getting shorn?

10% of your net worth gone *poof* just like that. Wait until the wealthy get wind of this.

This is a message that could ignite the real fire under the bitcoin price. There is simply no other suitable protection.

994 yuan hit, ground control to BTCChina, countdown commencing, engines on.

This is the Chinese rocket in action. Or Second Market has been buying. Or... Take your pick.

Crazy business idea: outlets all over the city where you can plug stuff in (mainly to charge phones) where you pay per watt with bitcoins! No need for safe or bill accepter or money pickup services. Just a bank of switchable outlets via deal with neighboring business. Add in wifi for bitcoins if the area is underserviced (public parks?).

Perfect storm.

Exactly.

This fallacy that deflation means people won't spend is very persistent, even though briefly thinking it through demonstrates it isn't the case, at least not for very long. Deflation takes holders from (relatively) poor to wealthy. What do poor people do when they become wealthy? Keep living in their cheap apartment or car? Or BUY better stuff? They splurge. That is why bitcoin tips go up when the price rises and merchants do better when the price rises.

Yep, "kicking and screaming" hopefully through the ATH, though a correction and break before that seems likely.

As China drags us upward, this is the kicking and screaming part as we get whisked past the big psychological barriers on China's terms, not ours.

Looks like China's still very cognizant of the MtGox price, as of course they would be know it's a Western phenomenon and many getting their first exposure in MtGox pricing. Nevertheless, China wants to blow.

How can it not be volatile when it grows this fast? That's the thing, slow steady exponential growth may happen for other technologies, but with Bitcoin there is actual money on the line for everyone, so it follows human psychology and has mini-manias where it gets overheated then smarter people step in and correct it. With Bitcoin you have to up your tolerance for volatility to match the speed at which the price is moving.

Now that a bit of sanity has been imposed on the China rally they may continue in a more sustainable fashion. This is what price discovery is all about.

A clue to this little correction was available: I was watching Bitcoinity and noticed exponential curve shapes on the 30 day, 7 day, 3 day, 24 hour, and even 3 hour chart. When it goes exponential at all scales, that's when it's cruisin' for a bruisin' and any little thing will tamp it back down (usually only temporarily). That's something I'll keep an eye out for in the future.

The sting of $266 is still relatively fresh (about 4 times as fresh as the sting of $32, though that sting was much worse as price slid slowly to 1/16th and stayed very low instead of just a flash-crash to 1/5th and consolidation around 1/2).

However, if we trust zhangweiwu's analysis this thing could go huge for a few days then crash in China, taking the rest of the world along for the ride. All just a side show along the exponential highway to $10,000 and beyond.

This recent price action reminds me of early March, so maybe we consolidate for a week around $200, double a couple of times to like $800, crash to $250-300, then consolidate for a few months in the $500+ range. But of course history won't repeat so exactly.

Well, that's a government-subsidized bubble. If the Chinese government is backing Bitcoin, of course all bets are off. We are going to Pluto.

^ I think you answered your own question



In case it's still not clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG1qooBzE2w

Balls come from studying and thinking about Bitcoin and its potential, the possible outcomes and the probabilities of those outcomes, and then just sitting back and relaxing. Don't look at short-term charts. Look at long-term log charts to keep a clear head.

This may help: http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=3166 Then realize he's wrong, Bitcoin is all that AND a Gold 2.0.

The flipside of "Don't invest what you can't afford to lose" is "DO invest in what you CAN afford to lose" (as long as you have reason to believe the bet is asymmetric like with Bitcoin*). It's just not socially acceptable to warn people in the latter way instead of the former.

*Perhaps 10-20% chance of making you very wealthy, 80-90% chance you lose all your play money

It's certainly possible to make additional profit trading, and despite the many losers there are always some winners. It seems to me, though, that the average person would be satisfied with Bitcoin-level annual gains if they truly believed it had a future, or if they fully understood and internalized the idea that Bitcoin is a heavily asymmetric bet. If you believe Bitcoin has a good chance of going mainstream, you believe you've been privileged to identify the investment opportunity of the century in the form of simply buying and holding.

Of course "you can always have more," but is it really that people are so easily looking this gift horse in the mouth, or is it something else? It seems to me that such a ready desire to increase the risk is more a sign of not really grasping Bitcoin's potential. It seems the mentality is to "get while the getting's good" because Bitcoin may not work out. I suppose everyone's had that thought at some point: "Bitcoin may eventually get squashed out of existence by governments or hackers, but I bet I can ride this train for one or two big jumps and cash out enough to live on." With that fearful mindset it becomes appealing to try to boost your gains since you don't know if you intend to see where this ride goes, and you don't really know if you believe it could ever reach $10,000 or $100,000 per coin.

And really, that's fine. Not everyone is a visionary, and this isn't a religion. Moreover, some bitcoin holders are experienced traders and would only risk small portions of their stash. But the tendency for so many people to so readily engage in notoriously treacherous trading trying to catch price movements seems like it is a problem of lack of education or thought about Bitcoin's potential, including perhaps deep understanding of economics and technology adoption and otherwise how deeply broken the establishment systems are and what circumnavigating them would mean for the global standard of living.

I think it's a myth that Bitcoin's value mostly stems from transaction value or merchant adoption. The real driving force is long-term investment. Or rather, the value does stem from transaction value and merchant adoption, but not present transaction value or merchant adoption but future transaction value and merchant adoption. One of the things that investors do is drive up the price of things that will serve a valuable function in the future, since most people won't buy them now since they're not valuable for that purpose now.

So there's a complex relationship through time between store-of-value pricing and medium-of-exchange pricing, with store-of-value/investment being by far the bigger of the two, even though it itself is largely powered by prospects for eventual medium-of-exchange pricing. It's that kind of complex interplay through time. Nevertheless, there's a reason why the old holders don't sell much: they believe in the future potential, and they know that even if it takes years to get there the price would have to appreciate wildly fast to be ready by then.

This post explains it much better.

Here are some figures from the BIT investor's presentation. Note how miniscule e-commerce and remittances are compared to simple store-of-value functionality, which is an area where the advantages of Bitcoin are just as pronounced - if not more.

I think the reason store-of-value as a price driver isn't talked about more is because it's sort of taboo. To those who are less familiar with Bitcoin and its potential, it makes Bitcoin sound like a ponzi scheme the more store-of-value functionality is emphasized. So there's a taboo on pushing that angle. Of course there's always a taboo on saying, "Buy this thing (which I, uh, also just happen to own) because it's going to go up massively in price!" Nevermind that that's about the best, most generous, most helpful advice you could have given anyone at almost any time in the past four years; it's just not socially OK to do.

People also naturally tend to speculate, whereas merchant adoption doesn't come without proactive efforts, at least in these early days. So there's all around a large bias toward hush-hush on the store-of-value aspects. The problem is that people then get confused about the investment aspects and what's driving the price. But socially, that's not considered something you have any obligation to help people with, and people often aren't very grateful even when you do help them and even when you can prove they would have been wealthy by now if they had just followed your advice. The human mind just doesn't work that way.

You're absolutely right. The two drive each other, and merchant adoption is the final fallback for the price, at least theoretically.

The problem comes when people look at the price and say it's not justified by merchant adoption or transaction volume. Store of value and medium of exchange (SoV and MoE) are the two giant dynamos driving Bitcoin adoption, but while MoE is the ultimate theoretical grounding for the price, SoV is what the vast part of the actual price level is determined by. I think it's like 95% or 98% store of value, the rest being MoE. That may be one reason the SR shutdown barely affected the price even though it supposedly had a million users (inflated of course, but had to be at least 100,000 or more, and a lot of money was being moved).

So I think the biggest near-term drivers will actually be things like IMF haircuts and capital controls more than new merchants. The major commercial adoption will come later.

As that post on reddit put it, "The [investors] that invest based on a sound assessment of Bitcoin's future potential serve as a proxy for actual present commercial adoption by boosting the price in the present to a degree commensurate with how likely commercial adoption will be to take hold in the future. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand investing itself, as well as to misconstrue much of what is happening in the Bitcoin world."

I take it you're not a gold bug?

PSA: A correction now, even a big temporary sell-off, would be totally normal.

That's not saying we'll get one, but don't panic if it happens. The "DON'T PANIC" posts during a mini-crash may fall on deaf ears because they look desperate. They aren't; it is a fact that markets don't move in straight lines. Don't be a weak hand. Besides being generally cowardly, it is very expensive to your financial wellbeing.

We now return to our regularly scheduled rally

Indeed. It's possible, even somewhat likely, that Second Market soaked up most of the available coins weeks ago and we're now feeling the coin drought. Add that to the China tinderbox and BOOM. I expect continued rally, I just want to preemptively warn people that corrections are normal and healthy, sky isn't falling if the price dives one day, etc.

Yeah, seems we're all taking turns here. China was going double-exponential, needed a cooling off. That it was just a pause rather than a sharp knife-down perhaps says something about how solid their rally is.

10000% return in two years? Decent, I guess. If you're into that sort of thing.

I really wish people would stop worrying so easily (and stop expecting price won't jump around). Learn to shrug off volatility, because it is NOT going to be a smooth ride as we go to $10,000 or $100,000. You'll get shaken off unless you're made of steel.

It was obvious we had to take a breather. Double-exponential growth never lasts. Exponential can, but not double-exponential. Hanging around the $200 mark for a week is required in order to get back onto the exponential trendline, which we got ahead of. We of course won't sit exactly at $200 but will bounce around a bit. It's just killing time until the rise continues.

Now fully corrected. It might overcorrect a bit more (quite a bit more if China falls through support at 1000), then continue upward. Or it could bounce around here for a few more days before going higher. Either way, it is going higher, past the all-time high. Don't be spooked by violent gyrations, as these are commonplace in Bitcoinland.

Sounds plausible as an overcorrection. China being so close to 1000 kind of messes up the technical picture, so who knows, but either way quick recovery within the week.

What happened is China just bounced off support at 1000. Either this psychological barrier will hold and stem further selling, or it breaks and we correct deeper, to like 150-160. Then we'll be well rested and ready for the continued run-up.

Stamp is having API issues, and maybe trading issues. Losing its virginity in this choppy market action I guess.

Who's talking mass adoption right now? The recent volley of good news only means relatively greater adoption than before, therefore relatively higher prices.

Just wait for Trezor. Because if you make it look cute and easy through a fancy app, all that'll happen is thousands of lost bitcoins and PR debacle. Things will happen in their due course, each stage happening when it is ready to happen.

Since the Bitstamp API is broken, here's the Bitstamp info as of 20 seconds ago.

It might consolidate for weeks, but I think only a few days because I sense fierce momentum, especially from China. They're getting their first taste of the Bitcoin ride, and I bet they like it. Plus Second Market, Fortress, and all the media attention.

This few days of consolidation couldn't be more normal. Even if I had a crystal ball and knew for sure the price would go past the all-time high within the next two weeks, I still would expect a consolidation during these few days. Simply continuing up at the rate we were going would've been insane. So there's so far zero evidence the bull move of the past few weeks is over. Consolidation is exactly what we'd expect if the run-up is to continue. My guess is we're going up, probably within a week.

For highly analytical people like me, we make some of the best decisions when drunk.

Yeah, it stops second-guessing, lets you go with your gut, keeps you from getting bogged down in the details and missing the forest for the trees. It's a corrective for over-analysis, so it only works if you're actually prone to over-analysis. (The right amount of alcohol. Too much is eventually worse, of course.)

Yes, definitely. As I recall, 18% of American males say they use reddit. Biggest Bitcoin exposure ever on reddit perhaps, as well as the most positive and investment-oriented. Upvoted to like 4000, which is serious frickin' exposure. Plus the story was fromt and center on just about every other news site's tech section. And it was a pedestrian story in the Bitcoin world. The rocket was ready to launch already, but now...I don't even know what could happen.

There will be the standard several-weeks' time delay for that surge, though. Still, even discounting all of that, I think we're going up toward the ATH and within a week or two, then beyond. (Very very short-term fall is possible.)

It was posted to r/worldnews, which is 5th most active, while r/gonewild is 30th. http://stattit.com/

Getting a little altcoin action on the side? Bitcoin is a jealous bitch, watch out!

It's a good strategy.

So many people say, "I made a few hundred dollars then sold 'em." It's just impatience, otherwise they would keep some. When they get into fiat mode all they can think is, "My precious moneyses..." and maybe thinking about what they could buy with that extra few hundred or few thousand, they say, "I got FREE MONEY and you're all just playing around with virtual tokens! So long suckers!!" and sell every last satoshi.

I was thinking also, instead of talking about wealth in terms of bitcoins, we could talk about it in terms of percent of the total Bitcoin economy, like 4000BTC is about 4000/12000000 = 0.03% of the Bitcoin economy, or maybe something like 0.03% of all purchasing power in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Of course there are lost coins and hoarding that effectively make this quite a bit higher, but still it's an objective measure: it's what percentage of the outstanding bitcoins you own.

For example, if the Winklevii own 1% of all BTC outstanding and Bitcoin takes over the world, their holdings would (if they held them all) command no less than 0.5% of all the purchasing power in the world (even based on 20 million coins outstanding by then), and probably more like several percent. Outlandish wealth.

"If it doesn't go to zero, I think Bitcoin could be worth upwards of $500,000 to $1 million a coin."
-Former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya, who owns about 0.25% of all bitcoins outstanding (~25,000BTC)

Chamath means business.

Look at this feeding frenzy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

The thing I viscerally feel differently from earlier this year is that it's literally impossible to keep up with the news. There are what would be uber-bullish stories and videos in spring, now being passed by without comment. Simply because there's too much happening. It's dizzying.

The low volume could be people waiting for the wave of newbie money. It doesn't make sense to sell if a bunch of money is about to come in, but it also doesn't necessarily make sense to buy: you might do better to buy once you see the wave has started (since it could go down before that, since it just went up a whole lot very quickly). I would just buy now, but many don't see it that way.

On a more meta-level, consolidation was warranted and expected by many here.

China about to break its 6-month high:

MtGox order book riding high:

Let's look back at the old exponential growth chart:




Note how with the recent consolidation the current run-up now looks almost exactly the same pace as the Jan-March boom, just more volatile. I moved the boom period over to the present run to compare the slopes:




Looks like it's targeting 500 by mid-December. With a dash of bubbly exuberance, we could reach $1000 just in time for Christmas

Yes, this is very suspicious. It's like it can't go up because "everyone" is expecting it to, but it could just be that "everyone" is mostly a bunch of people so unnaturally conditioned to watch Bitcoin developments because of the recent huge growth (6 months ago). The new people aren't here commenting, maybe partly because of new forum membership being disabled (I heard, haven't checked).

I still expect fireworks (upward) this week, or at the outside, next week. It just looks too obvious, too easy to make money...but then again that's how Bitcoin is in general.

I don't really think so either, but more because of how recent the last bubble was.


That's the nature of exponential growth. The net bringing in new users is a lot bigger now than it was 9 months ago. As market cap grows to higher orders of magnitude, so does the leverage to bring in higher orders of magnitude of money.


It is always like this. The old ATH at $32 brought some profit-taking, but $32 was left in the dust pretty quickly, and that itch was a lot fiercer than $266. The consolidation below $32 was only about as long as the consolidation below the round figure of $50:




So I agree overall, but for different reasons. I think we may go to $1000+, but more likely this bubble will be smaller and take us to $600+ instead.

Nice. If not just a coincidence, this is very very nice. It even jives with the two-week theory, that it takes two weeks from the time the average person starts to research Bitcoin to the time they buy in. It means we are experiencing the calm before the storm, with today's rally even being part of the calm, compared to what's coming.

I'm stealing this quote.

Considering Litecoin was created by the owner of BTCChina's brother, there's probably a good chance.

Remember this next time people complain about wealth being overconcentrated with the early adopters. This is how wealth gets redistributed.

I always imagine Bitstamp as an old codger, always cynical and the last to approve anything. It'd be nice to see Bitstamp lead a stellar rally for once.

I leave for a few hours and like 20 new pages of posts. I could spend all my time just reading and posting in the Spec forum at this rate.

The perks of being in Japan, mwahahahaha

China busts through 1600! Restraint? Ha!

Feels good. I like what China did with the peak at 1888. Getting a little bubbly on the intraday, probably due for a good sized correction, but this thing is HOT.

Cooling off a bit, as it had to.

China + BIT + news = BOOM.

That was basically my thesis:


China has really followed through, with investor excitement and repeated national news agency support. The only question was whether wealthy investors would actually buy the BIT, or if it was just a gimmick. Turns out they did, to the tune of $15 million in six weeks so far, and likely to grow massively from there. There haven't even been any haircuts yet.

We rockin' now baby!

Who says they did?

Looks like getting goxed is officially still a thing.

People have been voting with their feet. I wonder how low their market share will have to get before they get it in gear.

Nice start to the week. /s

At least Gox is minority now.

Thanks, and...ouch, gox is hemorrhaging market share:

He's probably still asleep. It's 5am in Tokyo. You'd think maybe he'd have some kind of alarm just in case, but...

I've always said Tokyo is the best city to be rich in.

Bearish. Only 100x bigger? What do they think will happen when Bitcoin is 100x bigger, starting to enter the edges of mainstream, that it will just sit there and not squirm into every nook and cranny of the global economy?

More consolidation or even a sharp correction wouldn't hurt, as we are either somewhat overbought or quite a lot overbought:





...but we may get a surge instead, just because of momentum and it being mid-week. Trendlines for the current multi-week surge target $500 by late November or mid-December, and given the recent exuberance* we might even hit them earlier.

*though arguably that exuberance is already factored into the red-line trend

Locked 'n loaded...

Sitting on a powder keg here...

On the 30-day chart it looks like it started at a very fast rate of exponential growth entering November, then simply downshifted to a lower one.

Octopussy theme? Gotta save this for $800.

The whitelisting thing would push the price way up, simply because it would bring in institutional investors and other huge money. It's bad, but it would push the price higher, not lower, just like the SR takedown.

Absolutely. I know when Mellon came on that BIG MONEY was on the way, even if the scheme is bad for Bitcoin.

The funny thing about Bitcoin is that anyone in the ranks of the elite who understands it well enough to see it as a threat will automatically also want to own it. Now their interests are aligned with everyone's. They might be misguided, like Mellon, but they're Bitcoiners all the same.

Bitcoin is like the blob. Punch it and it just assimilates you.

Yes, they may try to regulate Bitcoin, but all their efforts will only push the price way higher without delaying the train by more than a few weeks/months, if at all.

Danger: Curving upward on the log chart. If we don't get a correction soon this could be the final blow-off to quadruple digits then crash.

Someone please STOP THIS THING

I'm comparing it to the month of March 2013, now just entering April. It's so close to an exact match for the past 30 days that it's uncanny. That suggests another doubling+ in a week then crash (possibly).

If we do a repeat of 2011 then God help us.

Not if you're a beginner(!!!)

Not even if you're an expert, unless you're exceptional. These boards are littered with the bodies of day traders who thought they could out-think the market. Some of them were very, very smart with decades of investment experience, fluents in many kinds of technical analysis. I notice the buy-and-holders are still here, whereas each monthly generation of traders has come and gone.

Luckily for you, buy and hold is also the easiest strategy for the beginner, in addition to being the most profitable. We may well crash fairly soon so now is not the best time to buy, but as rpietila said if you're still accumulating it doesn't matter much. Don't be a pig, just get in.

Here's a handy strategy guide for how to invest in Bitcoin, if you ever get stuck.

Shit man, that sucks. Bitcoin can really take you away from friends and family. That means you should probably reduce the size of your position in Bitcoin and increase the size of your position in her

Finally, a correction. I was getting nervous for a second that this would be the final surge to quadruple digits.

That was some pretty nice manipulation, first time I've ever seen it myself live. It was like the price was 618 but someone pushed through a zillion tiny orders at 609 so the price kept jumping between them, and just after that it tumbled. Good time to play the old manipulation card on Gox, where you can still cause major lag and blind trading.

China's just holding at 3888.80 now. No, Bitcoinity is broken? China not updating for 6 minutes.

China is going apeshit, price all over the place.

This is what happens when you go double-exponential. Thank goodness for a little cold water on this thing. I want just a bit more steady climbs. Disorder is bad.

I think he was joking.

When it's going up steadily, they cry "DEFLATIONARY SPIRAL!!!"

When it's going up violently they cry "TULIP BUBBLE!!!"

When it's stable they ignore it completely.

When it's correcting they say "TOLD YA SO!!!"

When it's crashing they laugh it up.

When it goes back up they say "TOO EXPENSIVE!!!"

When it goes way back up and then to higher highs they scream "UNFAIR!!!"

You can't win.

Nah, the reason for the correction is simple: it was going up wayyy too fast. Borderline double-exponential growth was starting.

You have to just sit back and laugh. Take a zen attitude about loss. The planet is gyrating, at times violently, in the death throes of the old system.

What in the??!?!

This is the very best angle possible. Highly bullish if this becomes the dominant narrative going forward. Incredibly bullish in fact.

I certainly hope it works out that way. The "financial Internet" is a term that may catch on, more so when things like colored coins and maybe mastercoin come on line.

Are they talking about porno actors?

Choo choo, old chap

China about to break 5000

At the last minute, Chamath Palihapitiya pops up and says, "Bitcoin is a huge, huge, huge, HUGE deal. We expect it to be $500,000 to a million per coin in a few years. This thing is gonna rip!!"

Well the last bolt has been released from the floodgates now...

EDIT: Except the lag. But between three exchanges we can pull through somehow.

Sorry to hear that, molecular. Somehow crazy things end up happening during these moonshoots. Maybe someone there was watching the price and left a burner on a cig fell out of their hand or something.

It's basically either we correct/consolidate now or we have a large correction/crash from quadruple digits. I'd rather see this thing take a breather for now and continue chugging along steadily for the run to quintuple digits.

By the way, congrats to all who saw this giant rally coming from a mile away back in Sept/Oct. Easiest call ever.

Hmm...

+1 to this.

Always remember the delayed effect. Whether it will be enough money to sustain the rally this soon I don't know, but there will always be a delay in getting funds to an exchange, getting verified, and figuring out how to store and safekeep bitcoins. That's usually several weeks of delay. That delay allows astute investors to make money, although that's easier when the price has been relatively calm since the surge is quite salient on a calm price chart.

If you look at the chart since the crash it looks like April-August, like we're fast-forwarding through the months hour by hour. So will it consolidate then go higher?

April-Aug:



Last 24 hours:

Gox at 740 just now.

The Goat never lies. Time to double down

Shakeout successful. New money locked and loaded, coins to dry up again soon.

The blocksize issue is one huge ceteris paribus fallacy.

White as the driven snow my friend, rest easy

+1

It's just rhetorical. I wouldn't expect him to actually sell it all.

What someone who is nervous at these tiny fluctuations should do is either self-bind like you suggested, or simply sell enough that they no longer feel so nervous.

Barry Silbert: 2013 was the year of venture capital. 2014 will be the year of Wall Street.

Buckle up.

The way the holders have the balls to hold is that they understand what is happening. The world is switching over to secure digital asset ledgers. They are simply unquestionably superior. Since they've already cashed out enough fiat currency to meet their daily needs, the only thing they care about is increasing their share in that asset register.

If you want be able to hold on to your coins, deeper research and thought about the system in the grand sweep of things is essential. Here are some links for deep Bitcoin scholarship:

Money as Memory

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1fw3m5/bitcoin_is_memory/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232137.0
http://libertyhq.freeforums.org/fed-economist-predicts-bitcoin-will-end-the-fed-t938-20.html
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=230416.msg2450191#msg2450191
http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/t/31743.aspx

Natural Order

I, Pencil video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE
I, Pencil essay: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
http://mises.org/journals/scholar/hasnas.pdf
http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebsite/TIL.PDF
http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/t/8889.aspx
http://archive.freecapitalists.org//forums/t/18619.aspx
Google "FA Hayek, The Fatal Conceit" (book, available in PDF)


Panarchy

Balaji Srinivasan, Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A&t=1m0s
http://athousandnations.com/2009/10/20/towards-youtopia-are-all-public-good-providers-earthbound/
http://www.panarchy.org/knott/bitcoin.html
Nullification: A Libertarian Gallop through American History

Economics

Google "Economics in One Lesson" (book, available in PDF)
http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf (PDF)
Applying Economics to American History: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-LJ3wZjD4I
Trade is Made of Win
Trade is Made of Win, Part 2


Also look into the revolutionary nature of:

- P2P

- Open Source

- Cryptography

(^ need links here, anyone feel free to add to this list and distribute)


Summaries

http://evoorhees.blogspot.ch/2013/05/bitcoin-2013-role-of-bitcoin-as-money.html
http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/storage/On%20the%20Origins%20of%20Bitcoin%20Graf%2023.10.13.pdf
http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/p/32931/512864.aspx
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=230416.msg2450191#msg2450191


Future Applications

Mike Hearn's 2012 talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA

It's true I was kind of ambivalent about investing at one point because I thought, "If Bitcoin succeeds, just about everyone is eventually going to be rich by today's standards anyway, whether they bought in or not." It's more about how fast you want to get there. If you invest now, you get to experience financial freedom in a year or two, instead of a decade or two.

I agree with the general trendline you've laid out, but the flipside is that these deviations can be quite large within the trend, and they tend to go into overdrive before they calm down. I think your 2-3K then crash to 1K (or crash to $500 and then level out above 1K for a few months) scenario is more a little bit more likely than an exhaustion and consolidation in the mid-hundreds. But maybe that rhymes too closely with April 2013. China pulling a 2011 could bring the price to more like 5K before crashing down to 1K. There's just a lot going on right now, and it felt like a perfect storm a few weeks ago. Now it seems the storm just keeps happening and we're consolidating, returning to simple exponential growth within the short-term trend, rather than double-exponential as we had last week. So it could be the eye of this perfect storm.

On the other hand, just a little bad news and a few whale cash-outs could douse most of the bullish news sentiment such as the Richard Branson thing and newly favorable media. It would be seen in hindsight as "bubble indicators."

I'm thinking 65% chance of a moonshoot from here, 35% chance of a cooldown to low-to-mid-hundreds.

Not instantly. I said financial freedom in a decade or two, and I mean by today's standards.

Bitcoin is more than just frictionless payments and finance. It's a complete restructuring of the world and the elimination of many inefficiencies that held people back. The removal of those inefficiencies isn't just going to make sending money cheaper and some online goods available at a discount. It will enable whole new industries like the Internet has, but it goes far beyond even that. It fundamentally, radically decentralizes power. It blows away most of the borders that kept people from participating in the international division of labor. It thwarts all kind of oppression, especially economic oppression.

It is "rat poison," as Charlie Munger inadvertently said, or as Chamath Palihapitiya called it, "schmuck insurance." Power to the people. Truly free markets, everywhere. Think China during Mao's reign versus now. That's the kind of change that's coming. Even for people who never invest in this bull market.

No I'm saying even people who don't invest will be far better off. Not better off than the investors, but better off that they would have been if Bitcoin had never been invented.

I pretty much agree with this. For someone who hasn't bought in, I would say just buy, but if you already have a lot, now is perhaps not the ideal time to buy more.

You're quoting Spaceman_Spiff, not me. I said "just about everyone." And this has already happened before: Just about everyone in the US is wealthy by 1950 standards, and especially by pre-industrial, and most especially by feudal standards. One to two decades is a long time these days.

You might be thinking of the economy as a zero-sum game. Take a look at these:

Trade is Made of Win
Trade is Made of Win, Part 2

Again, I said "almost everyone," so not necessarily including beggars. Consider how much things have really changed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-LJ3wZjD4I&t=3m45s

Please do. Ultimately, lack of understanding or thought about position management is probably responsible for a lot of weak handedness, because people don't have complete confidence in what they're doing. Once they start to panic, it's too late for careful thought and they just dump everything.

You may also like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRhtmcxDSIs&t=3m15s

Thanks! There used to be a "fundamentals thread" that was cultivated pretty well, though it was a bit more about short/mid-term price drivers than the long-term aspects. I haven't seen it for a while. I've been trying to create a list of the best philosophical musings or broader analyses of the Bitcoin phenomenon and its repercussions for the world. Things are just changing so fast that it's hard to keep up.

Not a promising start: climate change BS, "running out of resources" fallacy (economic ignorance), overpopulation OK maybe, technological "upheaval" (is this supposed to be bad!?).


More climate change BS, "post-capitalist"...stopped reading there.

Maybe I was too judgmental, but I can't imagine that someone so ignorant about the basics of how the world works (I think my high school teachers said the exact same thing as this) would have any reliable insight on the future.

That's a strawman, but here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWkN4ngR2Y

The climate is changing, yes, as it always does. The idea that there is some serious crisis going on with man-made climate change is a total sham, however.

I love that: "science" "deniers" - that's two appeals to authority in a single term. The climate change crowd is the most environmentally destructive out there. To care about carbon emissions over things that actually matter, like pollution, is anti-environmental alarmism. It's just an excuse for a global tax. I'm glad that whole charade is winding down, after changing its marketing from "global warming" to "climate change" after the earth refused to warm as commanded. It was one of the lamest spectacles I've seen.

Perhaps, and I haven't looked into that specifically but I wouldn't be surprised if that was a made-up thing as well. pH regulation should be among the easiest things for nature to handle. Much more difficult is pollutants and overfishing (that is one resource we can run out of, unlike oil). Leave that to Bitcoin. Property rights defined over oceans would end overfishing immediately.

I don't know how trust treasurers think. Probably most important is they don't accidentally lose it. Maybe I'd just say it is a mathematically secure global asset register, and they just got a large share of it. If the world decides to go onto that asset register system, that share will be worth a lot.

Molyneux: "Some guy just transferred like $6 million and it cost him 6 cents."

Schiff: <shifts uncomfortably in his seat>

Google trends:



1-year log chart for MtGox:

A lot of microtrades seemingly to try to paint the tape.

I just can't shake the feeling that there's one more good thrust left in this run.

900's being a real cocktease.

It's a tough call, unlike a month ago where everything was obvious. It could really go either way, but I think 65/35 odds we continue upward in the next week or two. I'll see how things look when I wake up.

MtGox ATH broken in yen.

If only they could've seen rpietila's Bitcoin investment guide. This is why few early adopters will be in the new rich.

Litecoin is approaching a tenth of Bitcoin's market cap. That's probably too high given Litecoin's utility: hedge, tumbler, arbitrage instrument, testing ground for new ideas, and fallback in case of catastrophe. The market cap doesn't need to be much higher (as a % of BTC market cap) for those functions, except maybe hedging, so it won't be.

You can see the hedge function at work very clearly in the past few days: people want less exposure to Bitcoin but don't want fiat, so they buy altcoins. Once it's clear Bitcoin is again on the move upward, the coins will drain out of the alts and back into BTC. The altcoins are like Bitcoin's inflatable cushion. They reduce volatility and even existential risk.

BOOM. No better time for a whale to buy than into a giant wall.

China ATH coming up and only 3% to gold parity!

^ One too many zeroes there.

But anyway, we've been doubling like every ten days. If the trend continues we'll be near 10K by the end of this year. Doubtful, but very much a possibility, especially as part of a final blow-off that ends up crashing into the low thousands.

I too am starting to suspect the rally is getting tired now, maybe 60/40 chance we don't break new highs this week, with possible sell-off. But when you say "all cash" I hope you don't mean that literally...

This plays right into the Chinese government's long-term dollar divestment scheme. They are encouraging citizens to hold gold, so they will do the same with Bitcoin. They just want to make it more like a store of value, which in my opinion is exactly the right approach. China got strategy.

Market orders on MtGox during panics are...contraindicated.

Bitcoin was famously declared dead in 2011 when it lost 95% of its value, then in April when it lost 80% of its value, now in December when it lost 50-60% of its value, crashing all the way down to...double the April top. (And April crash fell all the way down to...double the 2011 top.) Maybe pretty soon people will be lamenting a crash all the way down to $2500.

In other words people can use it but not require anyone to pay with it. Same as gold, silver, etc.

I had a bid at 560 on Gox, just missed it :/

Suppose you want to maintain 80% bitcoin, 20% fiat in your portfolio. Then there are only three possible cases:

1) You're under 80% bitcoin. Why would you spend bitcoins now, unless you're going to immediately buy them back and then some to get back to 80%? Not bearish for the price.

2) You're at 80% bitcoin. You might spend, but to the extent you do you'll be more and more likely to buy them back. Not bearish.

3) You're over 80% bitcoin. You'd like to sell, but if you can easily spend since you wanted to buy some stuff anyway, you'll do that instead to the extent you can, until you're back to 80%. In other words, you would've sold those coins anyway and instead you're spending them. Not bearish.

Verdict: Not bearish.

For deeper insight into this, see the discussion of average dishoarding rates and portfolio balancing here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.0

I usually don't get into off-topic, but this is relevant to investing in a not-too-roundabout way. It's very hard to make good investment decisions if you're sexually frustrated, or if you're relying on getting rich as the way to solve this area of your life.

First, most obvious thing: stop spending time online (no computer except maybe dating sites, no phone except for setting up in-person meets). Never be home. NEVER. BE. HOME. Home is for sleep, breakfast, and sex. Everything else is out there. Stop doing every anti-social/unsocial thing you're doing and start doing social things where you actually interact with people face to face. Doesn't matter what it is or who it is, because for the first few weeks practice is your only goal.

And for those times that you must be online, because you're addicted to content, watching TV/movies is way better than reading things. Couchtuner has most of the good shows. Comedies like Wilfred and visceral shows like Vikings will at least put you in a decent semi-social mindset before you go out. Better yet, take a laptop or smartphone to a coffee shop and watch there. Of course you'll have to graduate from that, but start small if you have to.

You can read pickup books if you want to, as they may provide inspiration on what's possible and open your mind, but beware that a most of them focus on the wrong things (gimmicks, getting numbers) rather than correcting the basic errors most guys end up with from years of indoctrination: scarcity mindset, putting her on a pedestal, taking yourself too seriously, etc. If you want to see material of this nature, as far as I'm aware of, you have to go back 15 years to the Usenet newsgroup alt.seduction.fast circa 1999-2001, which I don't even know how to browse now. Anyway, if you look hard and you need it, you can find it. Even there you have to carefully sort the wheat from the chaff, of course, but there is a lot less harmful advice. Re: The Game (Neil Strauss), it's definitely not the right mindset overall but in with the silliness there are some gems so if you've never done well in your life it can help. I'd look elsewhere first.

Now, nuts and bolts: Never turn down a request to hang out with someone, go to every gathering, party, etc. Find groups that share your interests, hiking clubs, tennis circles, Bitcoin meetups... no matter what it is, it's definitely going to be better than whatever you're doing that led to no social life and not touching a woman in a long time. And do it all, every day have multiple things in your schedule, even better would be to get a part-time job that requires social contact, like being a waiter. Look up every event, festival, concert, etc. in your area, put them in your scheduler and go to as many as you can. Anything to force you out of the house and to interact with people, or at least just be around people as a start.

Alcohol is called a social lubricant for a reason. If you don't drink and have no history of problems with alcohol, I invite you to start - but only in social settings! Drink a decent amount three times a week, at a bar or other such place, never to excess but just enough to get a solid social buzz. (To do this comfortably might require eating better and exercising more, which is a great idea anyway, and you'll need to drink a lot more water.) This alone can work wonders. If, as your name suggests, you prefer other substances, force yourself to only do them with other people. Once you're drinking, it will be way easier to talk to people and make friends. In fact, "drink until girls start returning eye contact" and "drink until you strike up conversations without even noticing" are good guidelines to ensure you're drinking enough (feeling sick, uncoordinated, sloppy, etc. are of course signs you drank too much). At first it might be that you get sloppy drunk and still aren't able to overcome social anxiety, but don't worry; just like in investing, "the trend is your friend" and you're moving in the right direction even if it might take a few weeks to see results. You have to see the upside even when it feels like nothing good is coming, knowing you're doing things that will change your results despite any short term inertia and noise. In other words, you have to HODL through it.

Just keep drinking 3x per week outside the house, keep exercising, keep going out, never be home, never do anything unsocial, never use the computer, never refuse an invitation, fill your schedule with meets any way you can, never dwell on negative thoughts, never analyze, just get out there for a few weeks and it will start to happen naturally. Input creates output; whatever you're doing every day is creating a certain mindset in you that creates a social output that is not working. Hanging out on the Internet and whatever else is pushing you down socially. Take that giant millstone off your neck and start doing all the things that you know push you up socially, and it won't be long before things turn around, assuming you've ever had any success before.

Once you feel up to it, you can do more deliberate things. One easy progression when you're out on the street, at a mall, etc. is to simply lock eye contact with every person you pass. Once you can do that, eye contact and smile. Then graduate to a "Hi!" if you want. That alone will put you in a much more social state.

Then as far as women specifically, you'll want to either go to bars/clubs/etc. or rely on connections, or use the Internet, or do cold/buzzed approaches, or better yet kitchen sink it. Do it all, and do it all at once. If you have specific problems after several weeks, PM me.

I'd say alcohol works especially well for me, because I tend to be very analytical by nature and I also self-moderate quite well. I suspect most who are investors and into Bitcoin will have that tendency to some degree, but if not the effect will be less - but still big - and you might have to exercise more conscious self-control to keep from drinking too much or getting addicted. Still, alcohol has been popular for thousands of years for a reason. It counterbalances some instinctual vestiges of when we lived in much smaller tribes, where social interactions with strangers and especially interactions with women were very high stakes and evolution has not caught up yet.

That said, alcohol alone is not enough, and drinking daily is probably not a good idea (and course: never drink and trade ). It seems 3x per week is good because it's just enough to keep you from getting rigid and falling into antisocial patterns, in my experience, while giving your liver time to relax between sessions.

Alcohol gives a kind confidence by removing social anxiety, but it doesn't necessarily give you positivity. Positivity, or at least a total lack of negativity, is golden when it comes to doing well with women, especially quality women. They can easily detect if something gets to you or intimidates you or if you have some grudge or sticking point or idiosyncrasy that raises a red flag or reminds them of some bad ex or stalker, etc. Just floating in easy with no anxiety is something alcohol can give you, but to have that same easiness at all times even when it comes to sex and challenges she puts up takes real confidence and comfort in the situation that can only be achieved through practice (repeated exposure and high volume of exposure per week) and through a genuine lack of negative thought patterns. If you're a real Negative Nancy, that's the very first thing to address as that will haunt you no matter how social you otherwise get.

Start a thread in Off Topic.

Tastes like a breakout is coming.

USDX also about to break 100.

Tim Swanson thinks transactions cost 25 BTC divided by the number of transactions in a block. That's a complete misunderstanding of not just what the block reward does but of what Bitcoin even is. He has gathered some interesting data, but his analysis is unlikely to be of much use as he has no fundamental understanding of Bitcoin in the first place.

Hmm...

Surprisingly bullish poll results so far.

This was a long time in coming. The spring is damn tightly coiled...

New poll needed...

Interesting. Poll results with 131 voters at this time: 2/3 think we'll go over 300 by July 31, and 50% think we'll go over 350.

We have a date with history, gentlemen.

Nice to see you fellows, too! Yes, it has been a hard winter of hodling these past years. This time we have built a careful base, we are up on pretty much all timescales, the stars are well-aligned, and the old 2013 movement patterns are repeating, including one I call the "battering ram." You can maybe figure out what that one is.

Here's a log chart, since it can never be posted enough. We have at least an order of magnitude of catching up to do!

It's only going to get worse until you get back in.