Bitcoin Forum

Investor confidence seems to be back on the rise, and some people are saying the bottom is in...I don't buy it for a second; I think its just the calm before the storm.

However, if I am wrong, and we start to bubble up again, I think the results will be catastrophic.

Neither situation is good for BTC, IMO...but I think another bubble would be much worse.

Chillin round 100 be perfect...but unlikely  a few weeks of that would give a whale confidence

Conflict, conflict, everybody disagree.
The more you argue up or down
The more bitcoins for me :)

Yeah, bitcoin is well on its way to mainstream acceptance...In fact, I was going to buy gas, groceries, rent, car payment, any basic neccesity of life, drugs, porn, and trinkets with my BTC today!  I guess, I'll just hold onto them though, because the price can only go up,uP,UP!  ::)

Dont fool yourself, this price is only justified by rampant speculation, not because metart or whoever decided to accept BTC.

It doesn't matter what you can buy, as long as there is something to buy. Drugs and porn are a good start.

Your post is half true.
I can buy a car with Bitcoins, as well as a house.

I don't know of anyone who buys porn except the guy I saw in the sex shop 3 weeks ago.  :D
I should have told him about Bitcoin!

You forgot internet dating. Can't do that with bitcoins. Oh... wait...  :P  :D

Drugs and porn don't justify why the current price is so high...you could buy drugs and porn with btc a couple years ago.

You can but, are people doing it?  Also it does matter what people can buy and how much they are.  The bulls don't ever like to talk about the fact that so far Silk Road reports 1.2 million/month in sales.  I think the hippies on my street are selling more hydro than that right now.

Sure, but now there is MORE drugs and porn :P

The order book on the sell side is at least 1.5 times that on the buy side(just checked:around 20,000 to 80 and 30,000 to 100)
The major buy back from recent crash sell offs and inflow of fiat from newly funded accounts is whats been boosting the price.
So I'm pretty sure another big dip/crash will come not too far, once fiat money to support heavier sell off diminishes, price will slowly decline and at any mishap, it will be accentuated by mass panic sell off. The mystery is to find the topping point..

20,000 to 80, and 30,000 to 100 is a very limited range though. On the entire orderbook the buys outweigh the sells by a decent margin. The sells are bigger than before, but I'd expect that given the last week.  :)

Stolen from another thread:



There is still money to be made on the upside potentially, but I think the second part of the crash (the second hill on the first graph, or on that speculative bubble graph that get posted here all the time) is coming.

I also believe that if we return in an upward trend shortly, it will be an explosion. (4 digits?  ;) )
I don't see it as a bad thing however. Sure, people will get burned, but Bitcoin would have an even more amazing media presence than before.

+1 this. People already think - it's recovered once, so why not twice? Then it'll be recovered twice, so why not 3 times, etc. In fact the more times this happens, the more you'll see new people buy in at each "reset". But each reset will be to a higher level. I see no reason why this can't be the "status quo" for something deflationary like bitcoin. This is new territory for everyone and who the hell knows what is "normal"?

Well, that would make BTC great for a speculative investment tool, but shitty for a currency or any kind store of value. If BTC is soley a speculative tool, it will not last very long.

i still don't know why a previous crash is being used to predict this crash.
no, history does not repeat itself. the fundamentals have changed a lot in the last 2 years.

+1

Sure this bubble looks like the last one, but I have no idea why people think it will behave identically.

Interest is at an all time high, bids are at an all time high, a ton of merchants are continuing to join in, and the price crashed so fast that all these new people see a great price to buy their first bitcoins at.

My point was that yes it bubbles constantly, but each crash (or let's call it a reset) is to a higher level. So long term storage of value is always trending higher if you ignore the noise. For instance people's $5 coins from last year has definitely increased in value - I don't think anyone denies that - even with the bubble(s).

Doesn't this mean that speculators and long-termers can both have their cake?

Its not predicting the crash, though it is mapping how the crash will likely play out (which is amazingly similar to every single speculative bubble graph you see, regardless of investment vehicle).

The run up from < $20 to $266 dollars in less than 4 months is what predicted the crash.  ;)

That's a very big assumption. This bubble may not be done popping, and who knows where it will rest. It is very possible that we will end up with a lower low than 2011.

What a load of the purest bear-FUD...

I was not making a prediction or assumption. Just putting forward a theoretical possibility - no-one knows how this will play out since there's never been anything like this before.

Uh-huh.

No... you are right, its not possible...BTC price can only go up, uP, UP! Right?  $10,000 coins by tomorrow!!!!  We are all going to be millionaires!!!!


Don't delude yourself, it is entirely possible. If you don't realize that, you are going to be the one left holding the bag. You may think you are a bull, but you aren't (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pig.asp).

I don't think so. The price has artificially inflated due to the seizure or closure of bitfloors USD bank account. People that had dollars in bitcoins are seeing that the safest way to withdraw those dollars is to buy bitcoins, driving the price up for everyone.

The question is, what will these people who are forced to buy bitcoins do with them once they transfer them out of bitfloor?

Fire sell off?

so i started making a list of thing you can buy with bitcoin, needless to say the list was extensive...
so i deleted that, and all i'm going to say is
if you throw enough bitcoins on the table, there's simply nothing you can't buy


@evolve, if your so conviced bitcoin is going to go down, why not order some food tonight Foodler.com (http://www.thebitcoinreview.com/site.php?site_id=1031)

Judging from the previous bubble, it is easy to make a bearish prediction, however the situation is quite different on an order of magnitude:

1. Security of exchanges is much higher
2. Larger number of speculators currently in the market
3. More and more merchants announcing everyday that they accept BTC (Sure, it starts with adult entertainment and dating sites today, but maybe a week from now we'll be finding stores like newegg/amazon accepting BTC, at that point it needs to be taken a lot more seriously. This is just a start and a world apart from where it was at in 2011).
4. From what I have last heard a couple days ago, the queue @ gox was 28k
5. A lot of 3rd party investors are dumping fiat into BTC trying to pump it up and raise confidence in the market

I was initially extreme bearish but extremely surprised that the 50 wall held up yesterday (as I expected it to go to the 40s), and I'm kicking myself for not having bought a couple of coins when all the signs were showing at the very least a short term rebound when looking at the money flow, wedge formation, and momentum/movement.

All of the above are at the very least signs of a sustained market in the short term and might even form another 'miniture' bubble before another collapse, much like the 2008 stock crash.

Short to mid-term I'm still bearish, and long term bull... I've got a 12 BTC (valued @ 120/USD at the time) bet hedged against someone, their fiat vs my BTC on where the market will be at the end of the month so I'm all for a huge crash to occur, but it looks like BTC might even be around the 150 range near the end of April before it starts its steady and much needed decline....

That would take money off the table that would be better spent buying back into BTC when the price is low enough. The money I have on the exchanges is reserved for trading only, for now (though I have made BTC purchases in the past). I havent moved any USD into the system since my first buy in back in 2011, and I dont plan on moving anymore in now.  

Eventually (once I get bored with BTC), I plan on cashing out into precious metals so I have a momento of my BTC adventures, though.

out of curiosity does anyone know how much bidwalls were before the crash? right now there is 17 million in bidwalls

The bid sum peaked at $16 million before the crash. It is currently almost $19 million.

https://i.imgur.com/je7i1wg.png

Just paid for a new web hosting account with bitcoins yesterday.  I wasn't even looking for somewhere that accepted them, just happens that the host did.

Or does that fit into "drugs, porn, trinkets" somehow?

Almost doubling in value in less than 2 days isn't exactly inspiring confidence in me right now either.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=mtgoxUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=2&i=&c=1&s=2013-04-17&e=2013-04-18&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=1&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

Look at it this way, we were way oversold.

That's one of the few thing they actually make sense to use them for.

You know, being snarky (and pretending not to get my point) doesn't change the reality of the situation.  

I think the point here is:
The world now knows about bitcoin, pretty much all of it.
But it knows it for what it is: A trading game with scummy figures playing captain of the industry and an attached army of zealots with the attitude of MLM participants.

In short: We're out of suckers.

Bitcoin just hasn't found it's niche yet.  It will eventually solve the funding issue for open source software, free music communities (free as in permission to reuse), and other crowd-sourced creation endeavors.  It will start off as a niche, but in a hundred years it will just be how the economy works.

It has. This is it. Ground Zero.
It's Max Kaisers and  Bruce Wagners forever.

How about being the same value it was 3 days ago? What a silly comment.

I agree that we're "out of suckers" as it were but I disagree that the whole world knows about Bitcoin.

Outside of my fellow news/tech junkies, only a couple people I know have heard of it.  Then of course there's also the fact that the majority of the world doesn't have Internet access (source (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)).

Did you forget the < $20 to $266 run up that caused the first part of the crash?...You know, when it was growing exponentially and at an insane rate? Do you really not see how following the same pattern would lead to disaster? Really?

I would love to see BTC $100 by the end of the year. I don't want to see it at $250 next Monday and $53 next Wednesday and $180 the week after.

Who is going to use it as a currency then?  It would basically a tool for traders to milk money from noobies.

I'm sure many here would love to see the volatility.  I personally would be happy if it stayed still for 7 months.

Bitcoin is not really useful for anything (except perhaps small time drug trade). It's a neat technological proof of concept but it sucks, and it's always going to suck, as a medium of e-commerce.

Also, actual bitcoin adoption hasn't gone up at the same pace as the price. We'd be consistently hitting the soft block size limit by now if it had.

Don't let the hype on the forums fool you. We'll see lower prices yet.

Ahh said like someone having obviously very little eCommerce experience.

Which payment processor are you comparing Bitcoin to when you say "it sucks" (Paypal?? 2Checkout?? Authorize.net??)?

I'll tell you what "Sucks":
- Getting thousands of dollars frozen in your account for weeks/months for doing nothing wrong; and basically bringing your business to halt
- Getting fraudulent chargebacks months after shipping products, losing all the money + chargeback fees + transaction fees; even when you played by all the rules (trackable shipping etc..)
- Getting a chargeback on money you have already refunded (that's my favorite), and you lost double the payment amount for a couple of months.
- Getting charged 2.5-5% per transactions
- Getting bullshit exchange rates that are 2-3% less than the true exchange rate
- Spending time signing up for accounts, getting "verified" etc...etc...
- Having customers says "My credit card won't work, the address doesn't match, the ip didn't match blah blah blah"

Can you name one payment processor that doesn't suffer from these issues...oh wait...i can... Bitcoin.

Hear hear!

After nightmare experiences with PayPal, Moneybookers and my own bank wanting to charge me a fortune (with Draconian conditions attached) to set-up a merchant account alongside my business bank account, I can vouch for all of the above.

Someone doesn't know what they're talking about here.

once more and more businesses start accepting bitcoin as form of payment we'll see more stability and less bubbles/crashes.

I have something here that might change your mind:
https://i.imgur.com/wWMAkRV.png
https://bips.me/pricing (https://bips.me/pricing)

Transactions will be free or cheap only if Bitcoin stays a very small niche currency. Either it will not be widely adopted or it will be more expensive than most other payment processing options.

Also, zero trust irreversable payments may be neat when trading between individuals, but companies need trust regardless of whether they use bitcoins. And payments NEED to be reversed sometimes. Banks and other financial intermediaries are absolutely necessary.

I'm actually involved in e-commerce, thank you very much.

I also do some commerce, and I am salivating because of bitcoin. So you don't need to use it, I will :)

Thanks for those last bullish posts guys, I needed to get some reassurance of were we are in the bubble chart.

So we are still in the denial phase? Way to go. It has to feel like taking money from little boys for the big hands.

This assumption only works if A) The block size limit is never increased AND B) No 3rd party companies layer themselves on top of bitcoin and start processing transactions in batches.


Would you like to elaborate on this?

If a company accepts Bitcoins they don't need to trust the customer at all.  Hell, if you send me bitcoins i'll ship your stuff to the north pole if you ask me to.

Customers need to trust companies when sending Bitcoins and this can only be earned through feedback and good service over a period of time.  Which is IMHO the way in should be.

It's very easy to figure out if a company is "trusted" (a quick internet search on when they were started, do they have existing customers, have they ripped people off etc...)
It's very difficult to figure out if a customer is "trusted" (a quick internet search will uncover almost nothing, especially if they are using fake details etc...)

Bitcoins forces the customer to do a minor amount of research into their vendor
Current payment processors force the merchant to do fruitless/impossible research into their customers

Which is more efficient?

Sorry it's the bears that are in denial right now. They still think they will be able to buy at $30. How sad.

Yea sure we are going to hit new ATH with thousands of newcomers !

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/timeline

Ah sorry, the date range was just wrong (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/timeline?dates=2013-03-12+to+2013-04-18). Your bad  :(

The most efficient is to forget research, make the sell as smooth and safe as possible for the customer, and to measure the small fraud rate and account for it t as part of your cost.

I believe the market has shown real resilience around the 50$ mark. The current price of 92$ has also held some ground already. With several thousand accounts being created @ MtGox, downloads of the main wallet software going up, more balanced media coverage, more businesses accepting BTC it all seems to me that going long is the way. I expect the "Bitcoin has recovered nicely" articles to start any time soon in the mainstream media. Long it is, my opinion.

I was interviewed today for an article of the runner-up Finnish finance newspaper Taloussanomat. I got to say something like this: "People are interested in Bitcoin for a wide variety of reasons. Some want to fight back the central bank, others evade taxes, and still others to buy illicit drugs anonymously. Without regard as to whether these reasons are good or legit in my opinion, they prop up the exchange rate of Bitcoin, and as an investor I will be among the ones profiting."

For our purposes that's everybody. When the bubble popped my dad told me on the phone he did read about "those bitcoins" and "how huge they have become" in the newspaper.
On that day I saw two teenagers on the street following the bitcoin price on their androids. ("216 Euro!!!")

They all learned what Bitcoin is all about: Buy and sell bitcoins.

Poor child.  We see the results of decades of the Mastercard/Visa duopoly.

So basically customers should be able to throw their money anywhere they want, without a care in the world, to any two-bit scam merchant and the cost of this reckless behavior should be shared to the cost of all legitimate merchants and diligent customers alike?

Also the "small fraud rate" is around 1% of total ecommerce...so basically for every $100 you spend online you are paying an extra $1 cause some douche keys his credit card numbers into Paypal phishing emails, or someone maxes out their credit cards and decides they'll just claim it was stolen.

Also this doesn't not make the process "smoother" because merchant require more info, and institute holding periods to weed out fraudulent customers.  I just bought some software online, had to wait 48hours for the download...do you consider that "smooth", i don't.  Would have preferred to pay with bitcoin and got the software in an hour no questions asked.

People with any sort of tech literacy have heard about Bitcoins at this stage. I have friends in Argentina that are not the most tech literate and they certainly know about it. Anyone who may actually use it anytime soon knows about it.

It's difficult not to flip-flop when it comes to the valuation. Predicting pricing action has very little to with fundamentals. It's all about the perception of fundamentals and predicting whether or not there will be another wave of speculation based on headlines. If all of the business that now use Bitcoin had quietly adopted, we would not have seen much of a stir in the price.

If a wave of new buyers is coming in, it is because they think there will be a successive wave of buyers based on upcoming news and announcements and they are still getting in relatively early. It has nothing to do with the number of downloads, companies using Bitcoin, widespread adoption, or any new deep level of understanding of Bitcoin. It has everything to do with the fact that there could still be a news release around the corner that can propel this higher vis–à–vis speculators.

I've been surprised by recent pricing action. Everything tells me that this should trade sideways to down over the next few months. But....it's not the new adopters that are setting this market. It's the new speculators, I suppose. And I suppose that regardless of the fundamentals, for the foreseeable future there will be the allure that some big news story might propel this into bubble territory again. We should retest $50 but I'm not sure how soon/if this will happen.

I guess I'm the only one using Bitcoin as a store of value.

Oh well, more for me.

No you are speculating on a higher price. That's what all the "store of value" types do.

....and businesses are using Bitcoin adoption for their own advertising purposes. It's a good press release for them as well regardless of how much business they receive from the adoption. It's great for the first two or three sites in any given niche. I doubt the fifth or sixth dating site will release anything.

It will be nice to get past the headline bubbles and focus on fundamentals. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon. The next big headlines will likely be exchange related.


As a store of temporary transactional value or as a store of long-term investment value?? No, I think everyone is using this as a store of investment value, investment value that is highly dependent on headlines. As a store of temporary transactional value (simply to make purchases), we would have a very different valuation.

Regardless of what you guys think, it's worked out well for me.

Much better than holding dollars would have. The volatility doesn't scare me, it is a growing pain.

Post bubble one is the situation that most of the people thought bitcoin is a scam and it will die, but it didn't. This time the people already know it won't die and everyone is waiting to buy at low, and that typically won't happen

This simply isn't true.
I remember that was the word when we were at the low single digits: If it only goes to triple digits it will be much more stable.

I didn't imply it would ever be stable. I just recognize that it is meant to deflate, and that's where I want my savings. It will deflate as long as enough people see it as a store of value, and hey, I'm one of those people. This can happen irregardless of available services, which somehow you and others neglect.

Furthermore, I do not believe that the market would have crashed so far if Gox wasn't a piece of shit. People market sold at $220 and didn't actually get out until $120. I doubt they intended to trade in that manner.

Of course it has worked. It has gone up in value. If making money is the goal, one can make the most money when pricing action is completely divorced from fundamentals.

I'm not concerned with a restatement of the obvious. The people who held because 'this is working' got burned a week ago. I was one of the lone people on this forum warning of an impending explosion. So, I guess that worked for me.

I'm interested in how long this can be divorced from fundamentals. We will likely have another news hype cycle coming. I simply wonder at what point the news cycles will have diminishing returns. Once we have major adoption by businesses and everyone is sitting on their bitcoins, 'storing value', while businesses are not really transacting very much, then what happens?

Even with major support at the exchange level, I have a feeling the public and most analysts would still look at this with extreme skepticism despite the fact that the headline would push it higher. And even with new exchanges and infrastructure, I do not see a major buy-in by the public anytime soon because they are skeptical of the investment 'store of value' just as they are skeptical of financiers and bankers. So they would be highly skeptical of that combination although it would make for a wonderful headline.

If Bitcoin is designed to rise to eternity, it will be quite some time until people actually start using it to do business in a meaningful way. Pricing is destined to be completely divorced from fundamentals until it fully fails or succeeds.

No, not a scam. They simply woke up to the fact that it was bizarrely overvalued due to market action of a classic bubble.

I don't care what ignorant pundits think of Bitcoin.

There is not a "divorce" from fundamentals. I can buy cars, houses, and other high cost goods with it, do you expect it to be worth 1 dollar?
I'm not trying to hype this thing up, I actually called it going down right before it did. It was obviously overextended.

Making money is not the goal, PROTECTING MY MONEY is. You might think I'm crazy, and that's ok. Hopefully there are more crazies out there, buying coins from the speculators. I got a bank account on my computer worth more than my bank account down the street.

I'm going to continue to buy as the price goes up.

And what will you do if it doesn't?

I will still buy.

Even if it goes down for a year? two years? a decade?

Because that means the price is low and it's the most opportune time to buy. I'm not saying I would have bought above $200, I use my brain (sometimes).
The fundamentals look stronger to me than they have in the past, and much stronger to me than they do to you. That is most likely the cause of discrepancy.

Ok lets say we go down from here 1% a day for a year. You bought all the way down prices are now 2.6 dollar, at which point do you stop?

You say that you are using it for a store of value, but you also say you would continue sinking money into it even if the price declined for a decade or more without sign of recovery?

That doesn't make sense. At all.

He wouldn't really need to stop as, by your calculations, after a few years he would be able to own all the bitcoins in the world for almost nothing.

Hopefully some bubble action again, but probably not :(

News flash, I hold bitcoins. I can hold bitcoins and not be delusional.

I don't think you're crazy, but you don't put forth any kind of argument other than 'I am protecting my money' and 'I can buy cars and houses with bitcoin.' You think it's going up because that's what it does. Fair enough.

I am medium-term bullish on bitcoin but do think it's grossly overvalued.....and do think it may rise and continue to be overvalued despite fact that it should trend lower. I am willing to profit on this over-valuation, but I am not willing to become irrational because of it.

In this religion, however, I suppose it is heretical to make those kinds of statements.

And before one calls others ignorant, one may want to stop using words that don't exist (irregardless). Just a thought.

EDIT: I actually don't see it rising much anytime soon. I still think we could retrace.

I think the confusion here comes the fact that in order to use bitcoin, you have to invest in it. People invest in bitcoins for very different reasons... Some people use it as their savings account, while others merely use it as an online debit or shopping card. Either way, the volatility forces people who use bitcoin to speculate on its value, influencing their purchase decisions... This can only be fixed by building a bigger bitcoin economy, making it so that bitcoins are able to be traded for more things other than dollars, making it no longer tied solely to the dollar value... But you can't build a bitcoin economy without investing in and using bitcoin... Therefore, it's kind of hard to separate "speculators" from "bitcoin users" at this stage.

Welcome to the Cult of Bitcoin, your black tracksuit and kool-aid awaits...

Awesome. :)

LOL

I see why you have the sweet ignore.

My beliefs do not have to be validated by you. Bitcoin is very, very important to me, therefore I will defend it to its' grave. It promotes freedom.

Unless something comes along that is noticeably better, I will stay on the bitcoin train. I would most likely spend it if it went down perfectly like that. Also, if the fundamentals indicated that this action was in fact necessary, I would wait to buy until I thought it's valuation was correct.



I've read the word in many books. Pundits are ignorant. "It halves and then it multiplies"

Anyway, the latest news cycle was suggesting that people should think about putting it in their portfolio. More and more businesses are accepting it. The bitcoin community is experiencing huge growth. Bitcoin ATMs are real, they will allow people a quick, efficient way to purchase and exchange bitcoin. Its got more and more going for it. As the world economy goes down the toilet it provides a store of wealth. ASICs and the block halving are a big deal. Those are just some of my thoughts. The amount of rumors as well - from legitimate people in the bitcoin community, point to big things coming down the drain.

I gotta run though, I'll talk to you fellas later.

Who is trying to validate your beliefs? This doesn't even have anything to do with BTC....You said that you would put money into a depreciating asset as a store of value.  That makes no sense. Period.

How exactly are you storing value in a asset that is losing value?




Yeah, the cult doesnt tolerate dissent....or you know, facts.

I'm the biggest Bitcoin fanboy ever, but that doesn't change my resolution that we've started a multi-year bear market

I'm changing from mid bull doubting to buy coins now at 95$ to mid bearish.
Time will tell, but I'm gonna wait to see the 80$ and 70$ walls been eaten, maybe next week, maybe never.. If It goes up like fuck, just take out the fiat and go to Punta Cana/whatever cool caribbean place and fuck some whores, to forget the second bad prediction I made.  ;D ;D ;D

he's probably one of those that is thinking in terms of bitcoin becoming the new standard for "value", making the dollar amount irrelevant. that's a pretty wild belief to have for a digital currency that is still in its experimental stage, and still only has an economy tied to dollars... but who knows he could end up being right

In several years Bitcoin will have found a successor, so either you are predicting the end of Bitcoin, which is hard to reconcile with being a declared fanboy, or you're wrong.

The time for adoption is now, and it is happening.

I think is bad we didn't had a REAL correction, down to $30ish and then stabilizing at no more than $50ish. I think $100 per coin is overvalued at this point, and the price is so high only because newcomers feel that they are getting cheap coins and want to be part of the next bubble.

There is a fundamental difference with the 2011 bubble: now everybody expects BTC to recover and go into bubble mode again, sooner or later. People is not screaming SCAM! like in 2011, people today is screaming WHAT A NICE PONZI! I WANT TO GET IN EARLY AND BE PART OF IT!

In fact, after the bubble burst I've been called by 5 friends who wired me A LOT of fiat to buy them bitcoins through my Gox's verified account. It's crazy, I could live all we have left in 2013 just taking 10% of what they gave me. All of them say: hey, now that the bubble popped, is a good time to enter and wait for the next one!

I have to admit that I'm amused by the fact of making a very nice profit doing NOTHING, but at the same time all this makes me sad. I hate seeing friends I love and respect entering into Bitcoin ONLY because is bubble-prone and ponzi-like (let's state the truth, as all commodities Bitcoin has all the characteristics of a Ponzi except that no one is promising you guaranteed returns... Well, some hardcore true believers do)

At the end of the day, buying $30K in BTC it's a PAIN IN THE ASS for the average Joe. Going through MtGox, etc... Is slow and painful. And then, cashing out significant amounts of fiat from the system is even more difficult. This for me means that $100 BTC/USD is very overvalued, and that price is just based on the expectation of riding the next bubble. I think this is not healthy, and I would prefer much more a rapid downtrend to $30ish, to then grow again with people really USING BTC, while businesses acceptance of the currency grows in parallel.

Forgot something: all the guys speaking about bitcoin being deflationary... Well, didn't you see how its value just got from $266 to $100? What was that, the USD deflating?

Don't fool yourself. Bitcoin is not going to be deflationary if we don't break the loop. While the "value" of Bitcoin is established with its exchange rate for FIAT... We are just fucked, and it will just be a TOY for speculation.

Think about the FED: they own fiat money, and if they feel BTC is a danger for them, they can just pump it to the sky to crash it to almost $0. How do you avoid that? Breaking the fucking loop.

We need business that set the price in BTC, and pay all their costs (including salaries) in BTC. We need to break the laces with fiat money. When we do that, then we will have a really deflationary currency that will serve as store of value. Until it's value its related to the exchange rate with fiat... We are fucked.

Your statement seems logical, yet financial markets are rarely logical or rational... Prepare to be surprised at what they can do :)

It won't be 1% daily for that long. There will be ups and downs, obviously and some floor. Everybody has a plan, mine is to play volatility and earn some extra income.
I have no idea what his plan is... retire on it?

The point I am trying to make is: As for as store of value bitcoin isn't well suited, not because of it's volatility, that is only the symptom. There is something called elasticity of an asset.
What it tells you is how much prices influence demand and with bitcoin that is very high, a very high elasticity.

Low elasticity is something for which there is always demand, regardless - the things out society is built on, machinery, energy, and land. Of course they are subject to their own bubbles and pops but it is nowhere as dramatic.

This should be the start of a multi-year bear market. We have no fundamental reason to go up substantially anytime soon and should trend downwards.

But, we may have another media hype cycle on the horizon. Because this is driven entirely by the media, I don't think we can hit single digits in the short/medium-term. I see potential for more speculation before things get dire in the market because everyone is waiting for the next big news cycle. If nothing materializes we will begin to move down a little later than I had anticipated, IMO. I did not think the price would hold up this well, although we could/should still retrace the recent lows.

I see further adoption and development of Bitcoin, so in that sense I am 'bullish'.....but the long-term trend is a complete divorce of fundamentals and pricing action. At some point, this deviation will be rectified (likely lower). Even with new infrastructure, the price will have to go down once reality takes hold. The general public and most analysts will never accept $10K BTC. They may temporarily accept Bitcoin as a vehicle for speculation in hopes of more big news. But once the big news has finally all been factored, we will see wholesale dumping from which we won't recover. This could happen years from now, I suppose.

I suppose there is the tiny likelihood that Wall Street picks this up as the next big slot machine. That is what will need to happen to actually pull this whole thing off. It will never come through adoption (although adoption can keep Bitcoin alive for a very long time). The full embodiment of Bitcoin will require serious backing. I suspect this is where some former bears are deriving their newly found bullish outlook.




You have obviously never written a graduate level paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless

'The definition in most dictionaries is simply listed as regardless (along with the note nonstandard, or similar). Merriam–Webster even states "Use regardless instead."'

Also, VCs getting more involved means that their buddies in the media might start pumping this a little harder in the future. IMO The Winklevoss news was clearly a timed release with an intent to keep the price from falling further. The media could begin playing a bigger role in the future. They accidentally pumped it previously. In the future there will likely be more intent.

Gentlemen,

Keep in mind that Bitcoin value is a very complex thing on a systems scale.
Uranium might be cheap if you have no nuclear power plants. Once you do, it is no longer so.

The perhaps paradox with Bitcoin is this: as a pure currency in the price mechanism sense (a calibration unit for measuring relative values) it might indeed very well be overvalued, but then Bitcoin right now is mostly an extremely convenient value carrier and not so much a currency.
But.
The benefits of it, as a tool, as a resource for financial operations engines of great power, can save up a lot of relative value and energy (in terms of transaction speeds, fees, ...). So the question is:
How much value would it generate when compared to today's systems while integrated into an X-sized financial market?
Please note, that this is the same as: "how much energy would lubricating oil save in mechanisms when adopted?" and practically boils down to "how much energy would uranium fission free?".
So the value of bitcoin in a extratemporal, systems perspective is in fact for a large part the value of the energy freed by the technical advantages of it in a market of a certain size. How big will the market be? Well, that's the question.
Oh, right, the paradox part. In order to be adopted by such a market, the bitcoin price needs to be massively higher than this to offer good liquidity and use for abstract financial operations.
So, it's overvalued now, but undervalued considering what can come, so overvaluation leads to correct value?!

Awkwardly worded, but yes, this is the crux of the problem. Everyone is always saying that in order for Bitcoin to be useful it must necessarily be worth much more than it is now, which is a true statement. It is a classic chicken-and-egg problem. So how do we get from here to there? I think the only real answer may be, unfortunately, speculation.

No, we need less speculation, way less volatility, we need to make the blockchain scaleable to be able to handle an exponentially higher amount of transactions (as it is now, a single gambling site [satoshi dice] has clogged the blockchain to an almost unusable amount), we need a user friendly way to get money into and out of the system, a better exchanges that are trustworthy and can handle increased volume, a non poisonous community that doesnt allow scammers and ponzis to flourish (the lending board was an abomination last time I checked), increased and ubiquitous vendor support, ....and thats just the tip of the iceburg.


What we dont need (assuming we want BTC to succeed as an experiment) is for BTC to be just a speculative tool for internet nerds, that gets pumped and dumped repeatedly until everyone loses interest.

Speculation has become a bit of a loaded term and people tend to think of speculation as being equivalent to manipulation, but I don't see it that way. Every new service and merchant who chooses to accept Bitcoin is also speculating, they are speculating that Bitcoin is a viable technology and that it will open their business to a new and growing market. That certainly does not make them manipulators. I think we can all agree that it would be nice if the pump-and-dumpers, schemers, get-rich-quick types and legitimate manipulators could be removed, but that is obviously not possible in a truly free and open market. If Bitcoin is really a viable idea, it will have to be robust enough to survive the growing pains of a nascent emerging market, and if it is not, then it was probably destined to fail anyway. Just my opinion.

 :D



I said I would buy when I thought it was valued correctly. If I think it's overvalued, I won't buy. It makes sense. Go look when I told people not to buy in the $200's because I thought it was going down. I wouldn't have bought that high. Last amount I bought was at $120.

You are missing the point. Yes, bitcoin needs to build its economy more to become a viable currency. But the ONLY way that can happen is if bitcoins are worth a lot more than they are right now. Currently, bitcoins are in a very niche market, and companies aren't going to want to support it if not many people are using it. Bitcoin needs users before it needs merchants. The volatile, speculative aspect of bitcoin is a side-effect that can't be avoided if bitcoin is to grow past its niche stage.

So yes, speculation DOES need to happen alongside mass-adoption. I don't see any other possible way for bitcoin to become successful, unless you outright ban speculation and close down all exchanges that engage in it.

Gentlemen,

Some great and valid points have been made above. Speculation and price increase are necessary for fluent adoption, and more improvement is done on the system than ever. Just look at how they fixed the fork.

Of course, we need a quantum leap in infrastructure quality. That is holding us back severely, and that caused the recent crash. We need big money and big finance and big technology to help us on that one.

Yes, poor infrastructure is holding it back....but it's more than that. This forum exists in a tiny bubble. I feel like it's difficult for many of you to see outside of this bubble. The main reason Bitcoin needs real infrastructure is to give it legitimacy. The only way there will ever be true mass appeal is if the process to buy/sell bitcoins is seamless (getting there) AND it has legitimate backing by the types of entities at which Bitcoin was invented to thumb its nose. This may allow the general public to buy-in.

Bitcoin needs Wall Street and/or the large elements of the financial community. This grassroots effort will stall at some point without the involvement of serious forces.

See, the media pump is on. Western Union/MoneyGram simply mention 'Bitcoin' and BTC it goes haywire.

MoneyGram's senior vice president of U.S. and Canada says, "But we've not committed and don't have any imminent plans to announce anything."

This is a rehash of old Western Union news. They mentioned this over a month ago. They basically repeated the same thing in a new interview and apparently it's a whole new world for Bitcoin.

The price is shooting up an an unbelievable rate, and forum member are already getting euphoric again.

http://i50.tinypic.com/wgow0.png





...what could possibly go wrong?

Bear? Is that you? Stop it!

https://i.imgur.com/56dyQ.gif

Everything! Isn't it exciting?!  ;D

Good luck with that.

Well, for what it's worth, here's my fearless prediction:

We'll break $250 within a week from today.  $300 by the following Monday or Tuesday.  The next weekend there will be a very steep drop down to around $150 or so.  All followed by a much slower but steady rise after that.

Why?

Because I don't think the very few big players who are pushing the price care that much about what bitcoin is costing them.  They want the coin - and price, as they say, is no object.  This is long-term thinking by people who are putting relatively small amounts of money into bitcoin:  relative, that is, to their more conventional investments.

So they need to move quickly by pushing the price up as much as possible - because there is a lot of lingering regret in some long-term holders:  "Shit!  I coulda sold a thousand for a quarter mil!  Goddammit!  I will NOT let that go by again!"

The quicker the price gets pushed back up, the fresher those regretful memories will be.  And the more bitcoin these top players will be able to shake loose.

The steep drop afterwards will be for the benefit of the weak-hand holders who get scared that the 'crashes' are too close together and "Oh Crap!  Maybe evolve is right."

I'm probably wrong.  I'm hopeless at trading, myself.  But WTF - that's what I'm thinking.

Hello bears.   :P

Let's see what happens...

I think the price might just touch $150 before correcting back down.

Its worth to keep in mind that anyone who invests in better infrastructure tech for bitcoins will do so with the ambition to get a solid ROI. This return will come from trading volume measured in fiat.

This type of project is a big investment, so before we can expect better infrastructure we need to see a much higher BTC price, or people will need to increase the frequency of trading by magnitudes. While the price is low the best we can hope for is small incremental improvements and that will take its time to make a noticeable change.

Low BTC price leads to bad infrastructure

High BTC price leads to good infrastructure

These relationships have a direction. Anyone building a good infrastructure now will possibly influence the BTC price a bit but not as reliably as a high BTC price will lead to a better IF.

Bear market rally

If it was a new bull, nobody woud be euphoric about it

That's why bulls climb a wall of worry, and bears slide down a slope of hope

Just chuck it in  8)

Yeah, I am one of the bulls here and I'm going to short that sucker. No euphoria, thank you. It's a bear market rally.

Surprising how fast the euphoria returns.

Yup. I dont think we will be hitting or surpassing the old ATH, for a good long time.  We will probably get fairly close though, and likely within a couple days.

However, at the first sign of another crash, people will be abandoning ship en masse, only this time it'll be faster and harder.  Within a few weeks the volatility swung from <15% to 20% to 50% at the time of the crash...I wouldnt be surprised to see a 70%-75% drop in value this time (and if we get that low, we wont be recovering for a while).

Think about all the people who bought from ~150 to the ATH - what are they going to do now? Sell as soon as they can, imo. If they were sophisticated enough to hold then they probably wouldn't have bought in at those prices in the first place.

Many sold ad 50-70. And sold lots of coins.

This is true. We have ATH volume the last days. Just a couple of days +500k coins dumped, volume was even higher than in the first bubble. I don't think there are so many who have a significant amount of coins willing to dump - they already did.

This does not mean we are NOT in a bear market: we are clearly in a bear market. I think the mindset changed for a lot of people: before the crash it was "let's hold to see where it gets". Now its more something like "let's see how soon it arrives to $130 so I can sell". I say $130 but it can be $150 or $160, that point is different for everyone, but I think its clear the mindset changed a lot.

If this graph is supposed to look bearish, then you did a pretty bad job.
If this graph is supposed to induce a great WTF feeling, then you did a pretty good job.

+1 cause you made me laugh, not getting into speculation debates

If the price bottoms above the June 2011 high, it is a very bullish signal.

In June 2011, after the peak, many (maybe even most) people thought the trend change was just a temporary glitch in the rally and we'd soon be above the previous high. I'm seeing a similar pattern now. The optimism only started to wane when the price dropped below $10.

Yeah. I was surprised to see a weekly negative  :o It really took a second leg down, something which I didn't anticipate.  :o That we are currently behind a whole 19 days of gains, boggles me.  :o

To score a monthly negative, we would need to close below $95 in the end of this month. That would be a possible hint that a bear market (or even a correction/consolidation period) has indeed commenced.

$95 in 10 days. Not impossible, but a rather slim chance. I'd give 25-30% for that happening.

If not, then good bye with your bear market, suckers you uninformed :) You'll have plenty of time to wise up, buy back, and still become filthy rich. The Bitcoin Bull is not going to the moon overnight, but it will certainly dilute you out of the bulk of your holdings if you try to trade it meanwhile with inappropriate information.