Bitcoin Forum

Basically I bought some btcs last night thinking at £9.5 that they wouldn't go much lower anticipating what i believe to be an inevitable reversal. However since then they have dropped to £8.3. Should I sell the ones I bought 8.3 in the hope they will drop as low as maybe £5 and buy then?

Well that is the million dollar question!

I hate to say this but I'm selling my BTC at the moment. Its just too unstable. I don't mind if I make a loss but I really don't want to wipe out my investment.

Lost my nerve ... sold. But I will keep an eye on it when it starts to stabilise out (could be very low) I will buy back.

And to think I thought I was getting a bargain at £13.50...

TBH prices rebounded slightly on britcoin after I sold lol. They went from £8.3 to £8.45. But prices in the US are still slowly dropping it would seem. I think overall it will drop to below £8 by the end of the day. I am still overall slightly in profit from BTC so I don't miind taking the slight lose I took there if I can buy back lower.

depends on your nerve. I sold at 17usd.. aye I am uk as well just I play in whatever market is best for me at the time.

same with buying its all about nerve... have you got the stones to hold on to your bitcoins. if I buy when its low and it goes lower I buy more

say for example its at £8 each and I buy 10 then it drops to £6 I buy another 10 so my investment I only need 7 to break even. if it drops lower and never rebounds well I am SOL

my total cost to my self investment I put into this was £25. and made the rest from mining and playing markets.

never use money you are not prepared to loose.

How do you trade on the US markets, because I have noticed that britcoin price lags behind the US prices sometimes but I have no way to capitalise on it because I can't trade on the US sites :(?

use bitcoin7 buy in using bitcoins or paysafecard. to eur buy when the eur is low keep as btc then cash out whenever its higher. back to usd/eur etc.

the ukp market is small so tends to suck for price atm

I really want to hold off I think there is a few more panic sales left in people. before I stick my buy orders in.

Well because btcguild was down I was banking on some people being unable to sell and when it came back online the price going down a little bit. Anyway long story short I bought back at £7 which as low as the price has gone today on britcoin. Doubt it will go seriously below £7 so pretty pleased. Expecting it to rebound tomorrow. So far it looks like I was right to sell and buy back.

I reckon everyone is going to start buying now ... opinions?

buy low sell high
buy under 20$ if you can afford to lose the money and buy under 10 regardless
sell back as soon as you can recoup your original investment

I think you may have missed your opportunity to buy low. I got in while people were panicking at $11. Originally I thought it would be a bad idea to buy, but then Casey Anthony was found not guilty so I realized it was opposite day.

Why you reckon that? Because you jumped back in? Something fundamentally or technically changed since you sold and re-bought? I hope you can come up with a better plan for the future. I hate to see you bail at 6.50 and rebuy 6.00 on the same day just because you reckon everyone will start buying the moment you bought. Does this make sense?

Volume: 86327

skyhigh I sold at 8.3 and bought back at 7. that is £1.30 difference ... if i had more BTC I would have made a fair bit of money.

I'm curious. How are you guys determining whether to buy or sell?

If there was some specific use, it might be easier to predict. Say, if BTC was used as currency in a popular game. You can get some idea of how valuable it will become.

Are you betting someone will eventually develop a killer app, to drive the price up?

This is a game of high or lower.


You know the number is $13.  Do you think the change will be higher or lower?

What, you guys don't have the little bell that goes off right before the market changes direction?

Yes it's called STRATEGY

Agreed. Everyone should have a plan before making a trade. Whether its taking some off the table when its hits your price target or adding to a position when it pulls back.

Might I suggest a "wedge" approach.  Here's how a wedge works.  Pick a range below the current trade value if you are buying BTC, or above the the current value if you are selling BTC.  If you are an active trader with a position on both sides then you could do both.  Decide for yourself a plausible range that you think volatility might occur.  Say for example the price is $15, then you could decide that $11-$15 is a reasonable trading range.  Put in buy orders for say 10 steps:

(15-11)/10 = .4
So put in orders at: {14.6, 14.2, 13.8, 13.4, 13, 12.6, 12.2, 11.8, 11.4, 11}
Take half your cash, say $6000, so $3000 and put half of that at the lowest bid:

$1500 / $11.00 = 136.363636 BTC (so put in an order 136.36 @ $11)

Then half the amount of your bid each step up:

$750.0       / $11.4 = 65.7895 (order: 65.7895 @ $11.4 )
$375.0       / $11.8 = 31.7797 (order: 31.7797 @ $11.8 )
$187.5       / $12.2 = 15.3689 (order: 15.3689 @ $12.2 )
$ 93.75      / $12.6 =  7.4405 (order:  7.4405 @ $12.6 )
$ 46.865     / $13.0 =  3.6058 (order:  3.6058 @ $13.0 )
$ 23.4325    / $13.4 =  1.7487 (order:  1.7487 @ $13.4 )
$ 11.71625   / $13.8 =  0.8490 (order:  0.8490 @ $13.8 )
$  5.858125  / $14.2 =  0.4125 (order:  0.4125 @ $14.2 )
$  2.9290625 / $14.6 =  0.2006 (order:  0.2006 @ $14.6 )

Here's the principal: Never try to time the market

Everyone thinks they have a system to time the market, but no one does.  It is by definition a chaotic system, and not generally predictable.  So instead of trying to time a $6000 buy order at the perfect price at the perfect moment you hedge.  If the price goes down you pick up a little BTC, if it goes down some more no sweat you pick up some more.  If it breaks below $11 then you are happy because your buy price is closer to $11, then it is to $15 when you put in the orders.  And if it does break through your low price target, you still have half your cash to do another wedge (and you should only use half of that this time).  In fact, with this system you will never really be out of cash to buy more if it goes lower.  Your buying power will be lower, but then so will the price.  

Now if you have a little bitcoin, because you have done this wedge and the price is rebounding, or just because you are starting with bitcoins then the theory is the same in the upward direction.  Pick a range, split it up, and then double your sell order at each increment.  you can do both sides of the wedge at once centering at the current price if you have a position in both currencies, but remember to always split your holdings in half.

This is not necessarily the best system in any given situation, but it has a number of virtues.  It increases the odds that you will buy low and sell hi, without regard to your emotional state, and if enough people do it it creates a trading 'channel' in which it is difficult for the price to break out beyond the combined wedges of hundreds of traders. It also tends to leave you in an active trading position, so that you are not "all in" on one side of the exchange or the other.

I look at the cost of getting bitcoins by buying relative to mining (see charts in my sig).

There is a specific use, and bitcoin itself is the killer app: the storage and transfer of unseizable funds.  That someone was Satoshi, and his trick for making the funds non-seizable is decentralization.

The network difficulty has been going up, from under 1,000 to 1,500,000, because of demand.  And price has been going up, from under $0.10, because of demand for this killer app: bitcoin in and of itself. 

Bitcoin for buying stuff or using in games (like gambling) is more of a byproduct.

Bitcoin can store and transfer non-seizable funds.  The killer app we were waiting for is already here.