Bitcoin Forum

 I've read a few articles saying the driving forces between value increase have been:

- international trade,
- illegal trade
- merchant use
- speculation

Well hang on! This is completely forgetting about why I personnally bought a load of Bitcoins - I love it.

All these infernal speculators and none of them ever consider love and passion for a project as a driving force.
I'd say that's a driving force - hope. People want to believe in something.

That's the first thing.
The second thing I see missed in these analyses is personal utility. A migrant worker can send funds home without WesternUnion or whatever. Travelers a no longer reliant on the VISA & Mastercard ATM networks, travelers cheques or cash. Paypal users... well we all know about that.

Love and hope I think can drive BC price to any level, it just depends on how brave people are feeling. If a law is passed somehow destroying it in one country, do people soldier on?

And that's the difference until now - was that crazy bubble spike pure speculation? I don't think so, the price that lead to it I don't think was.

That's what I find striking now about reading the grassroots opinion from the new investors and more mainstream media - they care and look at the price as a source of data, when really it is a reflector of data. Thus, the market looking into itself can find no new knowledge. To that end Bitcoin has really made the woes of capitalism clear. They are so obsessed with greed they can't see see the humanity behind the price.

When I read the news that BC was 200x more now I should have been unreactive. Instead my eyes spun like fruit machines. Very enlightening.

You figured out why chartism doesn't work. Now just try to explain that to all the guys staring at the charts babbling about reading the future out of it. :)

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/ and subsequent articles seems to be the origin point of those "drivers."

"In the past month, the value has tenfolded.

In the past three months, the value has hundredfolded.

In the past fourteen months, the value has more than thousandfolded".

'Nuff said

Haha I'm going to use that next time someone tries to compare the bitcoin network to 'folding @ home'.

Bitcoin is the Linux of currencies. it is developed by amateurs and professionals who are working pro bono because they believe in the project, because they are excited about the project, and because the


It's reasonable to assume that Bitcoin will eventually obtain a market share  of currency similar to the market share Linux enjoys in the operating system market.

Indeed. Charts can be quite useful and we CAN pull a lot of good information from them, but it's always important to remember that, above all, charts are just a way of looking at data and the data does not drive itself. Data is driven by behavior and to understand the market - to really truly understand it - you need to understand the behavior. I've linked to charts in the past to back up my optimism but those charts merely represent the data which is the result of the behaviors that actually drive my optimism. Charts only show data and they can be manipulated to see whatever you want to see; only when they are used to express an underlying truth are they useful.

yes but the chart analysis depends on mass psychology...(looks like math but is the analytic result of marketpsycology)
so the only influence are the media and the forum (what is not always positive)



and the more people analize, the more predictable is the course.

I always have had a soft spot for game theory, math and crypto - always seemed like an odd combination of interests until there was bitcoin  ;D

The 'love' got us into bitcoins, but it does not set the price. I got burned a few times with the thought that selling was treasonous to the community or my own values. But I hardened up. NO profitable investor will recommend you fall in love with an asset and CERTAINLY not a price!


Interesting... if they could convert BTC to Zimbabwe dollars in the real.


Worth quoting again, Billyjoeallen

Paging Synaptic to this post  ;D

Who does he work for anyway?

Reality check:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=640&m=mtgoxUSD&t=S&height=320&r=28
Last 4 weeks on Mt. Gox.

This is a post-bubble long, slow slide. Any questions?

Never bring up reality in a bitcoin forum. They have no concept as to what that is.

Seriously, where did that "In the past month, the value has tenfolded" nonsense come from?

CONTEXT (2011 MAY) Article (http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/)


http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&width=720&height=200&m=mtgoxUSD&c=1&s=2011-04-12&e=2011-05-13&cv=1&l=1&t=S

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&width=720&height=150&m=mtgoxUSD&c=1&s=2011-02-12&e=2011-05-13&cv=1&l=1&t=S

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&width=720&height=100&m=mtgoxUSD&c=1&s=2010-03-12&e=2011-05-13&cv=1&l=1&t=S

Yes, no, no (unless you count that one downspike to 0.01, but few traders got that price)

Yes.

Why post the same thing in two different threads?

And why does it matter to you to communicate this? Surely it's not to protect others if it's "long, slow slide" as they supposedly have all the warning in the world, so why is it so important to you to come on time and time again to spread the same message of negativity?

Further to that, why no positives that are the alternative?

I think it was to refute the assertion made by another poster that, "In the past month, the value has tenfolded."  A chart cannot spread negativity, it only represents historical data.  I understand Nagle is a Bitcoin bear, but in this case, he's right.

And I don't dispute that, but it's a bit tiresome to see double posts across threads saying the same thing. More importantly a little elaboration wouldn't hurt, how does this post bubble decline compare to other historical bubbles, what else is interesting around his assertions.

I personally lived through the Irish housing bubble, saw money flow like water, big deals being done, and an entire society hang itself on the permanently high plateau assumption. Most people who bought in to that are now trapped in upwards of 150K Eur negative equity.

To call the 30$ blip a bubble is a bit disengenous, bitcoin never reached any of the conditions outlined above, and fell quicker then gave people a chance to assume the bubble mentality of PHP.

So you'll forgive me if I'm a little suspicious when the Bear comes around blowing bubbles on the weekends......

So are you saying bitcoins are as big a mover and shaker as Irish real estate?

And never present facts to shills and trolls. It will only make them crawl back under their bridges.

If you bothered to look at the article I was quoting from it was written in late May. At that point the quote was factual.

And heres a market analysis lesson for you (Don't get too excited about the drop in price over the last 6 weeks. Its a market commodity. This is what happens everyday in a free market). Google 'trading swings and roundabouts'. Here's an article to get you started http://askjooga.com/understanding-the-swings-and-roundabouts-of-the-stock-exchange/ - its all perfectly normal. Now go away and play..

By the way... the time traveler in your sig is the best thing ever.

No and I fail to see how you could interpret as such. What I am saying is that bubbles are a prolonged mass psychological phenomenon and that bitcoin to date has merely been a blip on the radar in comparison. 

Put it this way, if bitcoin were a true bubble, there would be no entertaining viewpoints such as Nagles, and the ratios of pro/anti would be somewhere in the region of 1/100 or more. This clearly isn't the case. A few hold the bubble view here, but most are quite happy to say that it came from nothing and can go back to nothing.....this wouldn't happen in a true bubble effect.

Ok, I see what youre saying now and I do agree, its not a really a bubble (though im sure that can be argued because of small scale of bitcoin) but more like a "Pump and Dump" that was done innocently by media hype and not criminal activity.

 ;D

Like I said, please keep it real.

That means no charts, no hype, no hysteria,

 just keep using it for everyday things.

Bitcoin isn't a panacea, it's still money, with all the problems that money creates.

Money is like digital in an analogue world. No matter how accurate you try to bring the resolution up, trying to transmit thoughts and feelings with it, it doesn't fit, magnifying and resonating the communication. Like a sandy bottom in the sea it resonates into waves on the surface of nature.

Of course the rise to $32 was a bubble! Time scales don't matter, symmetry does.

http://genaud.net/bitcoin/2011/JulyBtcTo2002Tech.png
Mt. Gox Bitcoin May to today (late July 2011) vs.
Nasdaq Composite 1994 to 2008

Nice, you're the first one to say bubble and back it up with a suitable overlay. Given the vast difference in timescales, this makes things quite interesting assuming we're past the post peak dip. Looking at the Nasdaq after the bubble, it since grown toward the 2000 mark, will be interesting to  see if bitcoin takes on the same steady growth or if we'll see more peaks again(assuming it doesn't fall or meltdown).

Cheers.

Please excuse the clutter. I've posted this elsewhere, but I think it's equally relevant here. Bitcoin has experienced three such plateaus after a run up, overshoot, and small collapse. The general seasonal trend however is exponential gains and I see no reason to expect the pattern to stop until the bitcoin economy either reaches mainstream/saturation or fails completely. In annual terms, I think we are very low on the sigmoid curve, but we'd need a few years to prove that assertion right or wrong.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&width=720&height=200&m=mtgoxUSD&r=360&v=1&cv=1&l=1&t=W&a2=SMA&m2=40

Note that 2008 was the year the housing bubble collapsed (after easing the tech bubble fall out) and the global economy tanked. I don't think there is any such analogy to the bitcoin economy. If anything it indicates the impetus upon which bitcoin was born (3 January, 2009)

"Investors coming on board"?

Don't make me laugh. There are no investors coming on board right now.

Perhaps in future but not now.