Bitcoin Forum

1. Buy up $100,000 worth of bitcoin.
2. Announce that you are now investing in bitcoin. Attend interviews and go "yada yada bitcoin the future of currency".
3. Sell it when the price of bitcoin goes up.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Did you just put risk free and Bitcoin in the same sentence?!  You also wrote 'when the price of bitcoin goes up'.  I know many of us may use such terminology when our optimism and enthusiasm takes over our vocabulary from our reasoning faculty ;) but whenever 'when' is used referring to future events there are always caveats - and with Bitcoin, big ones - there are so many unknowns.  This idea appears to have omitted what I would consider to be this critical factor.

May I ask your intended purpose for this thread?

You are going to have to make that $1,000,000 or $10,000,000.

I helped someone buy $150,000 worth of bitcoin in the last two weeks, and it made such a small blip on the charts you'd hardly have noticed.

(That said, I do believe the price of bitcoin is going up.  I believe there are many potential buyers with $50-$100k ready to throw at Bitcoin, whose only turnoffs are not feeling sure about being able to secure them, and having to deal with uncertainties of acquiring that many - like buying from Gox... in other words, if it were as easy as logging into E-Trade and clicking "buy", it'd be done by now)

+1

but gox IS just as easy as logging in and clicking buy or sell. (once your money is there)

I wish I could represent it as being that easy, but they worry about:

1 - sending money to some random (to them) company in Japan with practically no accountability
2 - unforeseen delays or surprises

If I hold somebody's hands through it, that tends to solve all the problems, but there's only one of me, and most would-be buyers don't really know me.  And at some point, I don't want to become an exchange (that's an all-or-nothing proposition to me).  I wish BitcoinsDirect.com were more than just a "coming soon - launch" page, that might be the answer.

Every time I have wired a large amount to Gox ($50k+), I have consistently had it available for trading by the next business day in Japan (which often is the same evening for me here in the US).  So I have no qualms about sending them a bunch of money if my plan is to immediately buy and withdraw BTC.  But few others know that.

casascius, I don't think that his point was that the actual buying would make any difference. It doesn't, unless the amount is in the millions.

The point was that if he has press connections and is a known person, he could hype it up after he bought coins. It could make the price go up. It's the same with any big Bitcoin announcements, I'm confident that some form of "insider trading" is done in many cases before making those announcements. It's so likely to be profitable that I can't see how it is not happening.

I'm so confident that this is happening that I actually expect some announcements coming up if there is suddenly a lot of buying going on. Most buying is based on need or reaction to something but some of it has to be related to this form of pre hype "insider trading".

Agreed.  We sell our excess "coinflow" to larger buyers (who prefer off exchange transactions).  We do at least one or two six figure
transactions a month and it is a "drop in the bucket".

Also to the OP "plan".  Anyone rich or powerful enough to move the price simply by announcing (i.e. a CEO, hedge fund manager, Warren Buffet, etc) would need to buy a LOT more than $100K.  For those kinds of people only buying $100K would be seen as a joke or gimmick.  The ultra rich aren't really interested in trading their "good" name for a gimmick.

Still liquidity and depth are improving almost monthly.   Six months ago I would have been shocked if someone asked for 6 figures worth of BTC today it is routine (good but routine) news for us.   Haven't seen a seven figure deal yet though.  6, 7, 8 ... it will all happen in time.

Time is on the side of Bitcoin, the longer it lasts, the deeper the market gets, the more the transaction volume the harder it will be for informed people (and yes most of the "rich" are informed) to ignore it or pass it off as a stupid ponzi.

I agree that $100k is too small. For someone who has the name to hype up Bitcoin at this stage, it's most likely pocket money. So in this scenario he would buy with at least $500k to $1m and then hype it up.

I would say multi-millions but then it suddenly isn't so risk free.  Forget the money the ultra rich can absorb a loss like that the way most people absorb a losing lottery ticket.  The risk is in looking like an idiot if/when the system is attacked, exchange rate drops 90%, has a huge setup back, faces regulatory pressure/shutdown (exchanges which in the eyes of the media = bitcoin), etc. 

Safer, easier, and more profitable to start buying quietly off exchange, dumping VC money into startups (no not GLBSE "companies" but real ones), paying someone like Gavin to come provide a presentation on the risks & challenges for Bitcoin (after signing a NDA of course).  Then over the next year  or so as the outlook for Bitcoin becomes more clear make a large public move.  If Bitcoin dies, or is marginalized before then, nobody needs to know.

this is exactly my experience as well.  therefore, its just a matter of education for the skeptics.

thanks for providing very useful information. 

agreed that most accumulating will be done in private/anonymously at this stage of the game.  there will be no announcements.

But anyway ...
https://i.imgur.com/aGn9n.jpg

done falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

5/29/11:  Price high $8.49, low $8.10. 

i hope he held.

iirc he was out in 2011

I didn't think he had.  I'm guessing from this tweet of his of Aug 12 (https://twitter.com/Falkvinge/status/236368919634513920) that he's still in?

no, myself is right.  i remember him capitulating and selling out.  just another short term trader with no conviction.

darn, look at me; i lied again.  ::)

Isn't this exactly what Kim Dotcom did with LetsBuyit.com?

Thanks cypherdoc and myself.  I had wondered because his original article is still one that comes up with many bitcoin-related searches and I have searched a number of times for a more recent update - just out of interest.  Was he ever active here or do you know where he announced his capitulation? 

It seems strange that he sold out completely given that he's still tweeting enthusiastically about Bitcoin.  I know many of you folks have been around some time so please bear with a newbie trying to do some detective work:  Falkvinge spoke Sept 2011 at the European Bitcoin Conference (http://bitgroups.org/pdf/official_program.pdf) and Amir Taaki was blogging about him in Feb of this year (http://bitcoinmedia.com/eurobit-rick-falkvinge-banks-the-fourth-victim-of-citizens-empowerment/).  I got the impression from the follow-on two series of articles Falkvinge wrote (Hurdles 1 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability/), 2 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/06/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-two-transactions/), 3 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/08/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-three-escrow/), 4 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/10/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-four-exchanges/) and Drivers 1 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/16/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-one-unlawful-trade/), 2 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/18/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-two-international-trade/), 3 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/07/03/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-3-merchant-trade/), 4 (http://falkvinge.net/2011/07/05/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-4-investment/)), which to my eyes were a mixed bag, that he was well up for it so I'd be intrigued to hear his rationale for pulling out if anyone could assist?

i tried googling it but i can't find anything about him selling.  i do remember that he did though very clearly.  even the very public faces of Bitcoin are just traders like the rest of us and can panic sell.

Its foolish to put all of your savings into one medium of exchange anyway.

I would tend to agree but what I've found interesting of late is that most of us don't have to 'put' our money in one medium.  By default we have our money in one currency.  Falkvinge (if he did what he said he was doing), assuming he was starting from that position, was still diversifying by having most of his money into Bitcoin and living expenses in Krona.  Yet to put that much in Bitcoin at this stage of the game when those who know the technology best are still insisting on calling it 'experimental' is a mighty high risk strategy so maybe rather than 'capitulating' he just saw enough sense to redress the balance and reduce a good proportion of his Bitcoin exposure. 

As much as many of us may like to be scathing of the economics that underlie centrally issued currencies, for the time being large-scale exposure to the pound/dollar/euro etc. is I would say still significantly less risky than to Bitcoin.

Yes, this is very true in that we often have to go out of our way to diversify.  Bitcoin has it's place in that diversification, however, his "all-in" mentality came off as he was looking for a get rich scheme, and when that didn't pan out, he capitulated. 

Generally I have roughly 10% of my investment funds, not savings, allocated to high-risk or speculative investments.  Taleb recommends this in his Black Swan book although I tweak it some to fit my personal preferences. 

But that's what I would say too if I lost a lot of money. I guess only he knows.