Bitcoin Forum

Edit:
Have you 'thanked' a skeptic today?
A market with some signs of balance is much healthier than a situation with clearly excessive exuberance (i.e. Early June 2011)
</Edit >


The chart below shows the current total value of all BTC that have been produced (sometimes called "market capitalization")
Please look closely at what happened last time the value shot up so fast.
Common sense tells us the current rally is over, sorry.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3677674/bitcoin-mkt-cap123.jpg

Please sell your BTC at the nearest exchange and wait for a much lower price.  :D

if your entire analysis is based on "look what happened last time" then i think it's you that has no common sense.

I did say ".. or very soon."

• "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" ~George Santayana
• Plus other factors, like Irrational Exuberance in the community*

*Some of which is very fun and I have participated in.

my chart analysis spreadsheet tells me that at current hashrate, and news that TV star Bob Saget is soon investing in a large amount of coins; BTC is undervalued by at least $15.

Don't base you trading strategy on what you think will happen. You will be wrong more often than not.

It doesn't matter, your entire argument is "look what happened last time" which is totally ridiculous.

Sold my BTC Thanks for the heads-up.  :P

• Please post any chart from ANY financial market in modern or ancient history that shows a massive, dramatic upward spike without a sharp correction.

Good luck finding one.

That was then.  This is now.


The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent [betting against it].


One thing is certain -- without there being plenty of convenient and secure methods to "go short" bitcoin, the longer the exchange rate goes up at this pace the sharper the selloff when one comes.   The total valuation (which some refer to using the misnomer "market cap") of $300+ million exceeds by a wide margin the amount actually needed to support the level of BTC transactions that are seen on the blockchain today.  

And looking at the exchange trading volume, the current levels are triple what they were in 4Q 2012.  If that isn't sustained, there could easily be a sharp pullback.
https://i.imgur.com/1aS7f3w.png
 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zigWeeklyzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

Or this is the new normal and there's more upside to come.  Who knows?

I'm a long-term bull. I started buying in 2011 and have continued to buy throughout, including this month.

I acknowledge the possibility of a crash/correction of up to 50% when this rally stops. But I'm still buying.

What bears must acknowledge is that Bitcoin 2013 is not Bitcoin 2011. Implying that the current spike is going to lead to a similar 90%+ lasting crash simply due to chart patterns represents some pretty surface level thinking.

Bitcoin has made great strides in the last year and a half, including:

1) More security (hashrate), and about to get 10x+ more secure due to ASIC deployment.
2) Far more professionalism in the ecosystem in general, and in 3rd party services in particular.
3) Development and understanding of best-practices with respect to how to handle bitcoin, in terms of online wallets, offline wallets, cold storage, etc.
4) Far more merchant adoption (just ask BitPay).
5) Traditional venture capital is now dipping their feet in the water.
6) More professionals and technologists from other industries are now focusing on bitcoin. Observe the bitcoin2013 speaker/panalist list (http://www.bitcoin2013.com/bitcoin-2013-panelists.html).
7) Services such as SatoshiDice show a use-case that isn't possible without bitcoin, and gambling looks set to become bitcoin's first high-volume general use-case.
8.) Bitcoin acceptance announcements from top sites including Wordpress.com, Reddit.com, and Mega
9) More startups and serious entrepreneurs investing their time, energy, and creativity into bitcoin.
10) Huge improvement in the quality of the mainstream media attention given to bitcoin.
11) Another 18 months of successfully processing transactions without any fundamental protocol failure.


Don't forget that the fall from $32 in 2011 was triggered by a hack at Gox, which was followed by a nasty series of hacks and scams that was able to happen due to widespread ignorance and naivety in the bitcoin ecosystem in general. Bitcoin has grown up to a large degree since then, and I posit that we're over the era of easy hacks and scams that killed confidence for a year. During that time, the core ecosystem was quietly gaining the strength and professionalism that's finally being acknowledged today.

"up to 50%" I think you are being irrational here. I can expect a crash of up to 95%.
We went from $31 to $2 before, another crash like that could happen again, it could be even more drastic.. Will it? I don't know, but pretending that 50% is the floor is foolish.

I think I was fairly explicit about the differences between 2011 and 2013 which lead me to the conclusion that a crash wouldn't be nearly as bad.

You made your case, and I think its foolish. Simple as that.
It took us 2 months to climb from ~10 to ~30 it could easily drop back to ~10 in a moment.. or it might continue upward.

Any currency can crash drastically and the trading pool isn't so deep as to protect bitcoin from this fact.

Fair enough.

Assuming that the two boom patterns should be similar (i.e. the whole thing be a fractal) - then the second is still very far from the top, it still might grow maybe 10 times. 

Exactly. In my opinion the current situation is at most a "small bubble", meaning that there can be a correction, but it's unlikely to be a deep one. To experience a "massive bubble" we would need to see the all time high broken and then panic buys from there. That is the point when it's smart to become skeptical.

The last time "this happened" was the ramp up before the $15 spike in Sept/Oct (?) 2012 ... starting at Jul'12. Hence, what you tell us is that it will top out, retrace roughly 25%, and build an upper triangle and breakout again. From that, I can't follow your "sell now" logic.

You're being just as irrational. Why not 99%? 100%? 97%? You guys are just throwing in numbers out of your head with relation to any data. If you're saying that the last crash was the absolute maximum, you should have a reason why.

You guys should just stick to saying that a crash is possible and not try to be any more exact since you can't, credibly.

KTE but he has a solid understanding of fundamentals don't you know :)  Quoting from another thread:

Anyone for Tea?

http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab22/1973mb1973/0722645fb9e75132a899247bc934e695_zpsdc249181.jpg

http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab22/1973mb1973/dd1757fc6f4b7d15ca966b991b56092a_zps3c3ff495.jpg

Saget is one of my favorite comedians -- I met him twice!  Do you have a link / source for this rumor?

I think the cup and handle will be true here. There will be pressure at $30 and again at the old high. I feel like we will "reach up" to break the old high by a tiny amount, mainly from the excitement of being able to achieve it, before falling back to the $25 range after a sell off, $20 at worst but then things will settle and we will climb back up and be much stronger in breaking the $30/$32 barriers. Once we clear $32 i really think that it will become the new bottom and a key indicator as to how things are going. I wouldn't be surprised to see us settle in the $35-$40 range within a couple of months with a strong barrier at $32 and $30

The gradient is not as steep on the second curve so if it is correlation we haven't even properly started the bubble yet but I agree with the above post correlation and causation are different things.

Posting in another "bad bear with a bad chart" thread.

Sorry to inform you, that I'm just going to buy some more bitcoins in case there's a major correction so your trading strategy might fail. Thank you for your understanding and good luck with this.

Agreed. See my post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144586.msg1534317#msg1534317

Excellent summary and I agree totally. I foresee some Bitcoin related startups coming online in 2013 for Asia side and once that happens, the BTC price will even hit USD 100 and beyond.

your argument is invalid because it postulates common sense which is neither common nor does sense apply on the internet

Yeah I'd like to hear more about this too.

Speaking of celebrities investing in Bitcoin.   Remember the Good Wife episode?   I'd bet 10:1 that Cramer started dabbling in Bitcoin way back then.

As goofy as he can be,  he's not stupid.   His appearance alone was a big bull signal to me at the time.

Copying this from the wall thread, it belongs here.

THEN: Fast, from less than $5 to the all time high in a month. Whimsical, silly times.
https://i.imgur.com/g5lOEDj.png?1


NOW: Slow (comparatively), from around $10 to the current price in 4 months. Solid, like my dick. Green metropolis w/ consistently higher volume.
https://i.imgur.com/D73CrWY.png?1

Hence, your argument == invalid.

Eh, IIRC, you ask with a "please", this sounds to me like you're buying, and dont want to buy too high, so you try to influence some to sell, so you'll be able to buy under 30 $


- Busted ;)

But humanitee! He's a bear with a chart! How could he possibly be wrong! A chart, I say, a CHART!

my arbitrary number is better than yours.  :-X

I think this point is important. A mega rally on top of a mega rally is unstable. The higher it goes at such speeds, the less stable it is.

On top of that, there are newcomer speculators who jump on high prices with the reasoning "it's going up!!!!". Those add to instability, 'cause they'll need no more reason than "it's going down!!!!" to dump their coins in any situation.



@humanitee:

Comparing to the earlier Bitcoin spike is no decent argument because our current rise is still fast even for a bubble. The 2011 one was an example for a bubble at once-in-a-lifetime speed. Our current rise is not slow and quite a typical speed for bubble danger.

Now I'm not saying I know the future, but using this graph comparison as an argument for stability is wrong.

Fingers crossed! I would love to see a panic sell off. Of course when the price goes back up the forum will be full of broke crybabies.

I wont wait any sort of correction to buy.  I've 500$ that will be availlable within 24h, and I'll buy at market price asap.

Did I mentioned I beleive in BTC @ 100 by the end of 2013 ?

It's already full of broke crybabies. We just call them bears :p

"History repeats itself" or how did that famous saying go...

Anyways, I think you are right, the price has to come down at some point. It's just a gut feeling though, who really knows what happens.

We might see a slight dip or two at the 30 and/or 32 mark because of the pressure of people who bought at those prices but I don't foresee a huge dip because the amount of people who bought at that level is probably quite small. We saw a dip to the $22 level last week when we neared $27 which is the kind of dip we may see coming up.

I just used it as a good buying opportunity and am hoping for another one in the upcoming days/week(s).

We have a winner.

If you think there aren't 10 times more people waiting for cheap coins than there was last time it crashed, then you're gonna miss one hell of a ride.

Do you know why it colapsed the 1st time? Can you be basing your theory on that chart alone with no other due dilligence? I hope not son.

do you?

if you say hacks you'd be wrong...

the hacks and BS happened AFTER the crash.

+1

Idk how many times people will repeat that myth over and over. Just look at the charts people!

Bitcoin has to stay at 32+ for a while, going around a second time to $5-10 will be fatal in public and business perception.

You guys and your predictions...... Anything can happen in the world of Bitcoin.

Example: Someone could have insider information, by a shit ton of BTC's, then the next thing you know Wal-Mart releases a PR stating they accept Bitcoin.

>insider information
Of what? There is no need for insider info on when the next blocks will be mined. We know the difficulty.

Insider information on big companies that may decide to accept bitcoin.

Actually, it's just a matter of time before Walmart, Amazon, and many other online stores will accept bitcoins as payment. They will most likely get it through one of many bitcoin payment processors so they can get their fiat equivalent currencies in their bank accounts.

Also, it's quite clear that the value of bitcoins will continue to increase in the long term. There may be ups and downs, but it will generally go up all the time until at least a few decades from now.

The last time the price shot up so fast, about Jun '12, the price leveled out for 6 months. Is that what you are trying to say? The price is going to go up until it stops going up, and then it will remain steady until it starts going up again!

Arg - do not imply that the 6month fall from $32 to $2 had nothing to do with hacks and scams. Yes, the fall from $32 to $17 was before the Gox hack. From $17 to $2 was because of an immature and unprofessional ecosystem from which we have made great strides away in the last 18months.

Thats why you wanna hold both BTC and $$ right  now, so you can jump it like any good transsexual in a strange bar.
http://ll-media.extratv.com/2012/11/29/jaredleto2-450x600.jpg

Why do you think our expectations are irrational? I have rational expectations of bitcoin that really has fundaments to go UP. We are too small market and current demand drives it higher naturaly.

Any second, any second... Wait for it... any second... here we... any... any... just about nnnnn.... any second... keep watching... keep watching... Here we ggggg.... any moment, right about right nnnn... it's right on the edge... here it cccc... don't look away... one little... just one... any second... It... is... going... to... happen... five... four... three... two... one and a half... one and a quarter... one and three sixteenths... here it... here it... nearly...

Just need someone to buy up those last 8000 BTC:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD/orderbook.png

*Checks bank account* Not this day, methinks.

It was more a poke at the suggestion the rally would be over soon. Though it also works well non-ironically for $30

their will be 8000 more at 31

haven't you noticed this whole rally has been buy out one more wall and its going to explode UP, one more wall , one more wall , one more wall ,one more wall.

there have been 3 "steps" in the 2011 runup to the bubble (from base of about $1):

• the jump to $2
• the jump to $4
• the jump to $9

So the top of the current bubble is either 450, 225 or 100 depending what "jump" the current one is similar to.

I don't believe in this fractal stuff applying to markets somehow, though.

Hey Adam, we went from 12 to almost 30... it's already exploded up! Don't fight it, man, you'll just get hurt.  ;D

Thing is: I don't want it to explode. And it's not exploding.... a good thing.

ya every wall bought was reward with 1$ UP

this wall is the same, but don't go pretending that their are no more bitcoins to be bought the higher we go...quite the opposite...

Either the wall will get eaten or it will move... of course there are more bitcoins to be bought... but there's also more money to buy them  ;)

+1,000,000

it seems that every post these days is someone talking their wallet, or a carefully crafted sentiment flag. maybe traders are starting to get anxious....? :P

... or very soon.

Watching "Panic buying" is exciting.
Remember markets go both ways.

Being a bear right now must be a very confusing, and depressing experience. 

In before "Ah ha! Bitcoin dropped to $50! I knew it all along!"

lol, eactly

It's a really battle, but the super-low volume on the latest "rally" is not very impressive.
Long-term = Bullish
Medium-term = Very low 20's.

Every post from OP is The Sky Is Falling. BitHappy why you so unhappy.  :) more

It's also coming up to the end of the month.

Any second, its gonna break the all-time high??  ;D



1st of the month? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpBP9dALcWw)  :D

Still waiting...  8)

why has nobody mentioned the recent forbes articles on bitcoin? Seems to me they along with reddit and wordpress have stirred the interest.

Are you ready for my predictions -  **Pulls out Crystal ball whilst cheap disco fog rolls in..**

The current rally will level off to a more natural upwards incline as those that were interested by the recent press get bored and confused about how to buy and keep / spend bitcoin, the hardcore geeky few or the ones wealthy enough to pay some trader to invest in it for them will continue to buy and trade bitcoin,

The problem with bitcoin is its small market capitalisation, its small user-base, and lack of suppliers selling real world items & consumables in exchange for bitcoin.

When more brokerages and big exchanges manifest, along with personal, portable hardware wallets and payment systems bitcoin will take off like a rocket- as the ipod type people see these hardware devices amongst there friends, big time traders and drug dealers see the opportunity to cash in and out with the exchanges.

Have you 'thanked' a skeptic today?
A market with some signs of balance is much healthier than a situation with clearly excessive exuberance (i.e. Early June 2011)

Mantonis has done like 10+ Forbes articles on bitcoin.  No new eyes there.

And he's clearly a cheerleader. Which is not a bad thing per-se but it should immediately trigger "I am reading a biased article" flags in anyone with a bit of common sense. Definitely not as beneficial as an article which would show a somewhat balanced approach maybe tinged with a little skepticism.

+1 sure ... (are you ridding the market ?)

OMG. It crashed in the wrong direction.

+1 thank you to let me know

wait

No guys wait, he was right. The rally ended and this is just a totally different rally that started at the exact moment the first one ended.

The first rally was Ted, this one is Todd. They are easily confused!  :D

It is very easy ... if there is a max SELL SELL SELL (already sold ? ... wait ... some are buying at $32 and soon will sell at $0,001  (joke) )  :-)

I love it when people tell me they're "Sorry to inform me."

Amen to that.

One week later...

$33.20 / BTC

Yep, time to go hang out with Nagle and Edward50 - have fun!

OMG, Edward 50.  i'd forgotten about that idiot.  did i have plenty of flame wars with him.

The rally ended at 33.2 followed by a huge crash to $33.

Run for the exits, the end is near.

I did my best to resist talking to him, but I am a fan of your work.

It's one thing to be wrong, but to be self righteous and indignant about people not listening to your predictions of doom and failure is the height of hilarity.

No, the first rally totally ended and then we had a relatively calm period (didn't you see the post "Why is the price so stable lately?"?) So clearly the recent rise must be a new rally.

I wouldn't really call this a rally, this was a spike... some number of folks dumping a huge amount of cash in to bitcoins.

But it is exciting! :D just this morning I was saying we were unlikely to hit 32 today unless some one dumped a massive amount of cash, and look at that. O.O

It adds to that hilarity when you heard them saying" I don't want people to lose their money so that's why I'm here", in all seriousness. :D

For the shorter-term traders out there (long-term can ignore): Instead of trying to "call the top," or deluding yourself with fantasies about how this rally will continue unbroken to 40, 50, 100, or whatever, instead make a plan for how you will try to stay with the trend. The way to do this is to use stops and keep raising them. For example, since January 8th, every dip to the 20 day exponential moving average (EMA) has been bought. So one way to stay with the rally would be to set your stop .2 - .5 BTC below the 20 EMA, and keep raising it as the 20 EMA goes up. Since 2/14, the uptrend has accelerated, and every dip to the 10 EMA has been bought, so if you want to be more aggressive about protecting your profit, you might set your stop a little below the 10 EMA, and again keep raising it as the 10 EMA goes up. Sure, there's always the chance that you might get stopped out right at the bottom of a dip that breaks the pattern, but this is better than selling way too early (and watching price rip much higher without you), or being caught like a deer in the headlights when a major pullback comes (and thus holding too long due to your conviction that the rally must continue). You can always get back in if you get caught in a little head-fake and the uptrend resumes (and so long as you are willing to use stops, there shouldn't be anything scary about hopping right back on board). We've been hugging the 10 day EMA fairly tight during this rally, and one scenario that might indicate we are near a top would be a steep ramp that gets price extended way above the 10 day EMA - if that happens, we are likely due for at least a dip back to the 10 EMA, or much lower. This is pretty standard trading technique, and I'm sure something like this has been pointed out somewhere on the forum before, but if so, it is drowned in the clamor of unfounded opinions. Personally, I'm in for the long-haul, so I'm not concerned with shorter-term trends, but if I was, something like the above is how I would try to gauge and ride the current trend, with no opinion about where the top will be, or how long the trend will last. Bald opinion is a terrible guide for trading, so ignore all opinion (yours and others), and instead measure the trend and ride it until it breaks.  

I predict a crash all the way to 35 by end-of-week.

I don't think you are using the term dead-cat bounce correctly. It should be "dead-cat-bounce up to $18".

Psh if it crashes all the way to 35 i'll eat spaghetti tonight.... but since i'm cooking spaghetti for dinner tonight, lets hope this is a self fulfilling prophecy.

I didn't say which week. Though it will be soon, real soon. Very soon even.

The over-due correction is happening now.


<EDIT: Gox was showing incorrect asks below $29.75>
Stop Selling!
Now is the time to buy   :)

One large sale is not a correction.

$3 is a decent short-term correction. A much bigger drop is possible, but we have so many "bubble-heads".


This
https://mtgox.com/code/data/getDepth.php
was showing the ask price at 29.xx, but it was goxed.
The best fill I got was very low $31

34.2 - 32.8 = $1.6

One guy cleared out the order book, that's not a "correction" to the lowest price he got. Half the ticker sites are still frozen and the price is already over 50% over the lowest price he got to. I suspect if you give it another minute or two it will be back higher.

This is getting a little too high. I'm cashing out while the cashing is good.

Just don't make the mistake of going back and checking the price later, to see that it's gone up to $40. Even with all your sweet profit, you'll be kicking yourself.

I emailed this to a friend this morning calling the sell off.  Too bad I did not 100% believe myself.  Email was titled "Ready for the sell off?"  This is hilarious watching people panic.  It will recover and continue to climb...

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7157/btcchart.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/687/btcchart.jpg/)

FYI:
$34.51541 - 31.05   (....BTC at $31.05107)  =  $3.46  (or more, it probably went under 31)
$3.46 which is a very decent short-term correction.

The price is currently 33.32, not 31.05. 31.05 is just the point to which a seller cleared out the order book. It's not where the price ended up.
Maybe your ticker window is still frozen. Try hitting refresh.

that's what i find most pathetic, 1 person sells a chunk of coins and all the bears jump all over it, shame that every time it just moves back up to what it was before and shows them up.

"omg 1 person sold" crash crash correction correction!!

Try paying attention to detail, especially when you previously decided to insult someone.
I had orders filled at 31.05, did you?   :D

The (short-term) correction was ~$3.50, no matter what you believe...

This was on page 1 of the thread.
Was anyone able to respond to the challenge? Perhaps I didn't see it
...

• Please post any chart from ANY financial market in modern or ancient history that shows a massive, dramatic upward spike without a sharp correction.

Good luck finding one.

Maybe if you didn't use such self-righteous silliness as "I'm sorry to inform you", you wouldn't have felt insulted by someone pointing out how foolish you sounded.

Maybe this will help you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_correction

At no point was 31.05 established as an equilibrium.

Shhhh...quit helping all the noobs.  Just a joke.  But you are correct, it just does not happen(that I know of).

There is none. But what you cannot know beforehand is the magnitude of the spike. Today we are talking about +200% in two months. Remember late 2010? At $1 bitcoin was screaming overbought, yet it decided to go up another 30-fold before the dramatic correction.

That is akin to going to $1000 in the following 5 months. Now THAT is something :)

Actually, that would start to move into cool territory  ;D

I'm sorry, I'm confused.  24 hours ago the price was 31.5.  Now it is 33.5.  How does this qualify as a correction? Explain it like I'm 5.

+1  :D

/thread

That definition doesn't apply at all:


Bitcoin might be argued to be a commodity, but where was there ever a trade barrier?

Yes, that was my point. It doesn't apply. Because we didn't have a "correction to 31.05" and really, not a true correction at all.

However, if you mean this term is not applicable to a change in btc price, I disagree. There are plenty of trade barriers that still exist. Like Chase shutting down cash deposit accounts every time they find out they're dealing with a Bitcoin exchange. When we hear news that Coinlab is going to make transferring money to the largest exchange much easier, the price rises rapidly - that is a correction.

Regardless of how people are abusing this term, I would love to see the definition of a market correction that would qualify an instantaneous dip like we saw. It would make the term meaningless.

Hm. I wasn't aware "market correction" was so tightly defined. I figured it'd be any kind of sharp rebound after a move.

found this


here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_trend

Fair enough - I am sure that if you ask either of those authors if he considers a near instantaneous blip in the price caused by a single order a "correction" they would say no.

Otherwise "correction" would just be synonymous with "fluctuation" and would be meaningless. 

so then wtf is a "dip"

Fast track to gum cancer?

Have another

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4d5beea0cadcbb9503060000-590/since-the-federal-reserve-was-created-in-1913-the-value-of-the-us-dollar-has-declined-by-over-95-percent.jpg

That is perfect just like we all know where this chart will lead so too will BTC.

Scenarios--- Us government tells japan they wont be bailed out unless they shut down gox, or japan decides to shut it down for violating currency laws, SR is infiltrated and is shut down, Sr announces it will start accepting LTC... any others fellow bears? When do people stop believing this lie? When did beanie babies go bust?, when did people realize pogs are just cardboard? When will people realize that BTC is just 1's and 0's that are worthless as anything other than money? and that it is easy to replicate? 

Double LOL!

I love these occasional FUD posts, they keep the BTC/USD ratio in check so that corrections will not be needed so often  :D

can't.. stop.. laughing...

you win the thread.

I'm not sure this one is helping as I cannot even decipher what he is saying. Is he implying that US debt repayment is imminent? That Silk Road shutting down would have a dramatic effect on BTC price? That somehow switching to LTC would enable Silkroad to recover? That someone can just make copies of bitcoins? Huh?

I do what I can you can thank me when this thing returns to its intrinsic value, which is even less than fiat, at least you can burn that for warmth.

Well he indicated that bitcoin is not money, that it is or can be worthless, that the status of mtgox is somehow important, that an alt-chain can easily take over ... I am sure there are more gems in there.

You have to understand marco to know what I am saying. That fiat expansion chart will look like every other asset bubble chart. The debt expansion is the same thing as the money supply. It is going to collapse into a new great depression. I am saying US default is imminent, and yes Sr getting shut down will shut off about 23% of the market activity and that if SR accepts LTC it's price will rise and BTC will fall. I am not saying that BTC is easy to replicate but easy to imitate possibly with a better coin. 

One large correction is a sale.

The figures I've seen suggest Silk Road does about $250,000 a month. Even if every one of those coins was immediately bought/sold on the exchange, that represents about half of one percent of the volume of just one exchange (Gox) in that same time period.

Also, collapsing fiat makes bitcoin investing a good idea in my opinion. Sure there are other things you can store value in with a different set of pros/cons, but bitcoin serves the purpose well.

If Anyone accepts LTC, it is likely in addition to BTC at this point, not instead of. That would be silly. That's like a McDonalds store opening up in California that only accepts Pesos. Sure you *could* go there, but why? And what advantage would the owner of that store have by doing that?

In my opinion, the only way an alt-coin could potentially dethrone bitcoin at this stage is if it was backed by a company like Apple, Google, or Amazon.

http://spacedruid.com/2013/02/26/the-demographics-of-bitcoin-part-1/


I cant speak about the volume of sales of SR I read an article that said they did 22 million last year, I am not sure, I just know the vast majority of my customers by them to spend there, but who knows you could be right

As for the death of fiat being good for BTC that is completely false all asset prices will fall under that scenario

"If Anyone accepts LTC, it is likely in addition to BTC at this point, not instead of. That would be silly." ridiculous a competitor coin rising in popularity will be at bitcoins expense.   

  "In my opinion, the only way an alt-coin could potentially dethrone bitcoin at this stage is if it was backed by a company like Apple, Google, or Amazon."

That can happen tomorrow.

 
Not sure I followed this part.


I don't deny that. If it did I would strongly consider diversification. I was only trying to illustrate that as far as alt-coins go, it's too late to claim the crown without some serious backing. There's no way to program in a huge (relatively speaking) user base, proven history, or widespread acceptance, so recognizable backing or critical failure are the only ways to potentially dethrone bitcoin as the leading crypto-currency in my mind.

I love ween BTW.  :)

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

Nah, even if they did, as long as there was a free floating exchange between BTC and the alt-coin, Bitcoin would still win.

Ween is the best band.

I can agree, to some extent, that if another alt-coin was accepted everywhere BTC was, it would take some market share from BTC, thus lowering the price. Despite the fact that it's somewhat of a chicken/egg scenario in terms of even gaining that amount of adoption. There is no reason the number of coins would have anything to do with their respective values, however. If LTC was $1, that just means they would respresent $1x<total number of LTC> of the total crypto coin market (currently ~$350,000,000). If that number is 4 times the number of BTC, lets call that 44 million LTC coins right now, then LTC is worth 44 million dollars of the total market, which would drop the price of a BTC to 29.50 from the current 33.50 ($368m -$44m / 11m BTC). The total market cap wouldn't shrink, like in your example, it stays roughly the same.

I feel like I didn't explain that very well, but whatever.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

My money's on mccorvi-coins!

Much better title.  ;D

Yet somehow along the lines of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Smart man!

Anyone who wants a mccorvi-coin can send me BTC. I'll then bust out my colored pencils, sketch one up, and post it to you.

what's the rate? Can I get a real paper one?

A country could do it. It only takes having a large enough reserve to back each coin and place a floor under the price.

As soon as someone works out how to send pizza rolls over the internets, I'll send you some  ;D

What is the current exchange rate? And how many pizza bites to a pizza roll?

2

This is why if LTC or any other alt-coin actually gains ground, even temporarily, all that will happen is completely undo BTC and all cryptocoin all together.  One of the major, if not THE major, advancement and promises of bitcoin is that it is resistant to inflation due to the hard cap of 21million. If, it turns out, any two-bit script kiddie with 5 friends can effectively do so by creating a sperg-coin or what have you then people will be fully capable of extrapolating and realize the whole experiment is a bust.

That said, I also think this is the exact reason that any alt-coin won't gain ground.  Enough people are smart enough to realize this and not fall for it.

The majority of the bitcoin developers are statists and have no interest in making bitcoin more anonymous and hard to trace. There is a very good reason to have a competing currency that takes the opposite direction and has anonymity as its goal.

There are lots of things they could do to introduce these features but they are incentivised not to do so because of the larger bitcoin businesses who want less anonymity and more identification of users.

For the record, I'm dismissing pretty much all this out of hand. Plus, it does zero to refute any of my points.  You may not like the BTC developers and businesses, but the real world doesn't care who you like/don't like.

Another thing, even if bitcoin is $100 for one and LTC is $1 each it won't matter a lick.  If something is the equivilant of $100 USD you'll need either 1BTC or 100LTC. It's not like you some how get any sort of magical savings by going with the worthless alt-coin.

When talking about inflation we have to keep in mind there's inflation of the money supply (well-known in advance for bitcoin) and in-/defaltion of prices. Bitcoin makes no promise about prices, it just promises a certain pre-defined behaviour of it's money supply.

Now, talking about stuff like a possible deflationary spiral does not make much sense unless bitcoin is at least a major currency. Before a substantial amount of people use bitcoin for their daily shopping and b2b is using bitcoin heavily, there can be no danger for the world economy incurred by bitcoin.

On the way there (to bitcoin becoming a major currency), there will be another interesting effect: bitcoin is actually inflating the world money supply, because bitcoin can and is being used as fiat substitute. When someone buys 1 BTC from a miner for €25, that miner will spend the €25 in the world economy. That fiat isn't gone. However let's say bitcoin is also actively being used as a currency for payments and also as a store of wealth... The buyer might buy something with his newly acquired bitcoin and the seller of the good might just keep the bitcoin or pass it on to his suppliers (clearly not the case today: he would nowadays typically have to trade it for fiat to pay his suppliers and could keep (and/or spend) his profit at most in bitcoin). Thus now we have 1 BTC and €25 both being used as money within the world economy and have effectively increased the money supply.

The ECB paper contains the related story of the Q-Coin in China:


sorry to quote so much from that paper, but here they actually make my point:


So I support the "whole pie theory" (I think blablabla brought it up?): All the money in the world fights for slices of the pie. So yes: if LTC becomes more valuable, it will take pieces of pie, likely mostly from the BTC piece. But since the "cryptocurrency piece of pie" will likely increase tremendously over time, I even think there would be room for another crypto-coin. However, I currently see none of them having enough advantage over bitcoin to gain substantial foothold.

;tldr: BTC sucks up value (pie) from the FIAT currencies until there is none left. The ECB says they should take that into account in their stats. LTC can try to suck on BTC.

I doubt LTC or any other coin for that matter would be able to gain significant followers, aside from few curios types and people with no money who missed the bitcoin bandwagon.

BTC worked 5 years on adoption, business acceptance, and generally proving itself as a real deal that can be trusted - and that is the basis for the current valuation, not the raw idea or some future expectations. Alternatives have that path yet untraveled, and by the time they will be where bitcoin is now, bitcoin will naturally be 5 years ahead.

So no, it is absolutely unrealistic that a clone cryptocurrency would take any measurable portion of BTC market. Right now, they are all in different states of BTC circa 2009 - play money for a handful of geeks. For any alternative to have any significant impact, it would at least need to have some serious benefits over BTC *and* a proven track record. BTC has a track record - 5 years of uninterrupted blockchain operation. Nothing comes close. And the process of claiming market share, if we see some game changing crypto protocol one day, would be gradual - cross-rate of exchange would keep rising until it completely replaces bitcoins. I don't see anything with a slightest potential for that, yet.

The only serious market portion now taken by alt-coin is NMC, and you know what kinda portion that is - 0.1%. LTC or any other wannabecoins won't have even 0.01% in a couple of years.

I am going to quote you on this and then throw it in your face in a year or two. Really small thinking in my mind. Ltc will be adopted much faster than BTC was. Bitcoin already proved the concept, litecoin won't have the same hurdle to cross. In 5 years they will both either be dead or widely accepted, along with some other coins too.

So LTC and NMC and others are basically sucking on BTC's tit?
Makes sense, I agree with the analogy.

But I disagree that "no alt-coin will ever gain substantial traction." Basically saying that
This is not how a healthy market works. Even if, in 25 years, there are only 3 main cryptocurrencies - say, BTC with 94% market share, something else with 5%, and a third with 1% - then we'd still have a handful of hobby currencies trying out new features and trying to gain market acceptance. This is healthy. IMO, expecting that bitcoin is the work of God and will forever dominate 99.99999999% of the cryptocurrency market is akin to expecting an unhealthy monopolistic market with absolutely no competition or expecting that Bitcoin is the "perfect" cryptocurrency with the "perfect" features and the "perfect" everything that will absolutely never experience any problems and meets 99.99999% of the needs of 99.999999% of use cases. Is that a realistic expectation? Uhh, hmm...

Bitcoin started off great and yes, has a proven track record unlike any currently existing alt-coin. But we're only 5 years in. Why are we making grand assumptions about the future of cryptocoins? In 10 years, bitcoin will have been proving itself for 15 years but some other cryptocoins will have been around for 10+ years so what will stop them from gaining 2% of the market or something?

There's plenty of room for other playas in the game, don't be a h8er. :-P

True. Though I think for anything to not be eclipsed by Bitcoin, it will have to offer something that bitcoin does not and occupy a different niche. Consider that in the Galapagos, there were birds operating in several roles that mammals typically occupy in the wider world. They could do so, not because there was room for more than one animal in that role but because there were no mammals to fill that role in the Galapagos.

WRT Litecoin, I'm not particularly familiar with it but looking at its webpage, http://litecoin.org/ , it seems it doesn't really offer anything that bitcoin does not except, perhaps to the miners. And Bitcoin is about done with mining being a dominant part of its lifecycle. Good luck to it but I don't think it will be in my portfolio. Other currencies? Need exploring on a case-by-case basis.

Fear is more powerful than greed. We've just broken the ceiling of last time, and nobody thinks this is the time to buy. I bet people have dumped their coins so they don't get burned like last time. The fact that it has stabilized rather than crashed instantly indicates that it's not the same beast. Prices are going to keep rising, slowly but surely.

Definitely it's possible and even sooner. Just missing one part - substantial improvement. You don't just fork bitcoin code for that, there needs to be solid intellectual investment. Shortcomings of bitcoin are well known - just need an elegant solution. I don't see one around, but maybe because I'm the "h8ter" :) Slight "improvement" over btc will not cut it, it needs to be substantial. Any kid can take the code, up the coin limit 4 times, mine some for himself and call it kidcoin, but that's not serious. Once any serious organization steps in and starts their alt-coins, I'll be watching, now - nothing comes close.

Panic buy!
You need to buy now before we hit $49, $59, $69, $89!!    :D

Q) Since this thread was started, only one thing was missing, do you know what that is?

The rally is over.. LMFAO

yeah this is definitely the top. we are never going above 41, since it's just like 31 in 2011 :D

Y'know son...

Nobody thinks this is the time to sell. That is why the market is rising.

When it is going down, then your assumption makes sense.

Did you see it? We crashed to 39. Soon enough for you? My, it gave me a real feeling of nostalgia to be back in the 30s. Took me back to the heady times of early this AM when you could buy three quarters and still get change from a dollar (copper/nickel quarters, that is. Real ones are too rich for my blood).

I lol'd.

Rally will end when I decide, everyone.

please... please drop back down to low 20s... please? D:
XD I want to buy more!

Another dollar up per bitcoin in the last couple of hours.

There comes a point in time where the price growth becomes exponential.  We saw it in 2011 shortly before the collapse.  Is $2 or more growth per day sustainable?  Who are the buyers?  Are they buying simply because the price is going up?  That's a classic bubble.  It's not different this time.

While I was typing this the price spiked another 50c...

up to 44$ now..
were def in a real bubble now, this spike is nuts.

You mean $45.

:P too fast for accuracy.

I sold ALOT of btc around the $31.50 mark. I am kicking myself in the ass right about now because I thought it was going to be over around $33. 

I sold 20 at 27$, I'm not kicking myself, it gave me fluid capital to buy and sell  in the dips and peaks over the past few weeks.
Now i've sold 5 BTC at 41, going to sell another 10 at 50$ (if it hits there) Then I'm sitting for a while to watch the market. I also have an order placed to buy in another 20 at 20$

It's only going to get better $50 by friday!

Price is getting pretty vertical now, and we are getting extended pretty far a away from the 10 day EMA. Doesn't mean $45 is the top, the vertical move could go for a bit more, but this momentum probably won't be sustainable for much longer. Even during the initial bubble to $32 in 2011, price wasn't able to stay elevated way above the 10 day for long. So I think some kind of correction, even if it is a sideways correction (i.e. where we trade sideways till the 10 day catches up), is coming sometime in the next few days.  

You might be right. I almost wish I was trading on MtGox right now, sadly Virwox lags behind and never peaks quite as high or dips quite as low. Safer bet, but less room for huge profit.

"Do you think the rally is over now... or very soon?"

Yes, I think the rally will be over soon, time wise.

In previous run ups there has consistently been a steeply increasing price just before the top. The past day or so has seen a large acceleration of the price climb. Therefore, I beleive we are nearing the top and in the next couple days the price will continue shooting up to new heights and then drop back some. After the incline breaks, there will be consolidation and a stabilizing price for some time.

You are assuming that Mtgox lets you trade at the top moments.  The reality is it takes 15 minutes just to cancel an order, god knows where the price will be when your order gets through.

exactly... what happens when 1000 blind monkeys hit buy/sell keys? Right: VOLATILITY ;)

yay! crash!... aw.. its over.

Meh, bear trap again. All the people who have been holding bitcoins wanting to sell them are dumping them to the people who want bitcoins, so now there will be little supply and the price will shoot upwards again.

The rally is over, finally  ;)

I wouldn't be so sure.

honestly, did anything happen for real, yes?

We know before that the bitcoin protocol is resillient even against some flaws in the concrete bitcoin software, and we witnessed a practical demonstration of this. Fine. Maybe we even get a red candle for today out of this, which would strengthen our current position. Moreover, hopefully anyone believing we'll see $200 next week will come back to reality.

But beyond that, I don't see in what way the fundamental situation would have been changed, right now.

I agree, I also don't think creating walls is very healthy to promote trade amongst new or existing members.

HA!

good one

 ;)

once in a while, bears also have their laughter. be prepared: SELL SELL SELL.

A temporary weekend blip at worst.

Good luck jumping back on the train when it's heading for $60 next week.

BUY BUY BUY

Yet it's not even the weekend yet.

Meanwhile the wall at $48 gets stronger and stronger.

Not time to buy just yet.

Yes it is possible the rally is over because we are near the top of a long term rising channel. However I personnally think the rally is not over yet, there could be a breakout past $50 in the near future and then much higher prices to come.

From my blog

http://afbitcoins.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/20130314-10-day-chart.png?w=710

I think we'll get t third attempt to breakout, which if it fails will rebound back strongly yet again, we'll breakthrough at some point in the near future.

There is a huge resistance now in $48-49. Rather pointless to buy short term now. For long-term accumulation (especially with megabuck$) this is a good area with stable prices.

The support is around $30 and inching up. I don't really see a crash right now towards the support line, but my inability to see has never stopped the crash from happening.

Imo, many want to sell as the rally has stalled. They will find buyers at around these levels for weeks to come. When $40 or $50 is breached, we will see some serious price action :)

AF I really liked your blog and posted your last entry in a fb group I am admin (Bitcoin Greece).

Keep up posting there I will cover you...

Thanks klee I appreciate your comment very much :)

I think bitcoins could become very important in the future particularly in countries such as Greece which are being oppressed via control of money, ie the euro in that instance.

I've said it before and I will say it again.

If the price is to rise, who the fuck is buying?

I do believe bitcoin can rise $1k+ but that will NEVER happen when buyers are dependant on exchanges like mtgox.

The explosion begins once aunt jane can buy it with her credit card and bitcoin addresses are as simple as jane@coinbank.btc

Institutions such as this one will pop up, and start buying in lots of $million:
https://www.silverbank.net/

No reason it couldn't...

Though I think firstbits has a lot of mileage. Perhaps a combination of the two.

You are so bang on the money with that last sentence.

I think there'll be several explosions on the way up before that point, each one orders of magnitude bigger than the last. This one might be fuelled by smart investors who are just starting to see the potential.

I seem to remember one of the webwallets I used in the past had a feature where you could send btc to an email address, if that email address did not already have an account with this service then they would send an email to the email with directions on how to open an account and claim the btc sent.

To answer OP: Yes, I think the rally has ended and we are at the plateau stage again. See how the price spiked up about march 7th, and we have been consolidating ever since.

We're already basically there with Coinbase.

Yes, and with Silvervault you can also buy BTC directly by just depositing your trading bank account, no ordering process necessary. (In beta for partners only at this stage)

https://www.silverbank.net (https://www.silverbank.net)

This is quite interesting to recall.

Just note that every significant "crash" in the past has been triggered by major exchange failure.
Now, to achieve similar results you would need to have all the exchanges down/hacked at the same moment.

I disagree the 2011 crash was caused by exchange failure. It's debatable, but the mtgox hack and week-long shutdown was well after the top was reached.

Great thread to dig up. Its always amusing to read posts calling the top, even below the $50 low of the crash.

By the way, all the previous "crashes" now can be interpreted as huge long lasting bear traps.
Only bears were affected, not hoarders.

Yeah I was pretty confident it would end up looking that way. Nice to be proven right.  ;D

I think that neither was the "first crash of 2013". It was a bubble, it deserved to pop. It popped. Here we are. Soon we have a bubble. Then it will pop. Etc. etc. Circumstances have their role but they do not change the fundamentals nor the technicals.

I am from Mastercoin Foundation.
One of our board members mentioned that we would love to have your participation as part of our Smart Contracts Advisory Board.
 
We are building a consortium of crypto-finance firms to ensure that Bitcoin entrepreneurs benefit from a distributed system of trading firms for issuing smart tokens on Bitcoin.  We believe that will be a BIG revenue opportunity for trading firms like CCCC
The role of this advisory board is to provide an opportunity for Bitcoin industry members to influence the direction of the Master Protocol.
 
Perhaps we can have a chat about whether this is something you can participate in?
 
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks
Judith

that is 90% of all analysis here.

I also a bitcoin holder and I’m aware of its instability but I’ll take the risks. The price can rise and fall without any backgrounds and playing could be very tricky and unsafe business.

Well the recent "crashes" weren't because of any major exchange failure though. Several fuds along with the natural correction did us in there. And of course this rally would have its own correction that's for sure so i don't think there's any big deal with it. It's going to come.back up anyways

As a holder of BTC, I am expecting that the cryptocurrency will be swinging. Down and up - up and down: it will be the picture of the market these days.