Bitcoin Forum

Or the first one was a bull bear trap.
Anyway I hold more bitcoins now than I did when the price hit 266$.
Any thoughts?

I thought the first one was a bear trap?

The price rises too fast, bubble is coming....

How many bubbles before it's called suds?

The Apr 2013 rise was a real bubble and a steep one at that. People who never heard of bitcoins where pumping their money in. The crash was inevitable and the constant hacking/manipulation of exchanges and Silkrd ensured it.

The second rise we are currently seeing was started by the mtgox problem and ensuing price rise as people try to get their coins out. The feds seizure of SR and the resulting bounce back to current prices in short time greatly increased everyone's confidence in the coin. Now there is less of a chance of manipulation by hackers. Plus all of the weak hands have been scared off the exchanges after the bubble burst in Apr. Now there are a lot of people holding their coins no matter what.

There is also a shortage of coins as well so I've been told.

So. April was bubble and now we are in sustainable growth?
I like that view of bitcoin.

People can't withdraw real money -> ppl are forced to buy bitcoins with their MtGox dollars. It's great :D

After Silk Road issue, it became more apparent that at any moment bitcoin businesses, like MtGox, can get terminated. You don't want your real money in there that you can't get out. You are forced to buy coins to get out of immediate danger zone called 'MtGox'. If you finally want to actually have gained something in real life, you must withdraw real money, but you can't right now, or you have to take a huge risk of facing MtGox termination.

Pretty much bitcoin sheeple got cornered. And it's great for the price :) The outsiders naive guy might think bitcoin is doing great and its time to buy because the price going up, unbeknownst why it is rising. If such a person adds real money, his kind could save MtGox from death (MtGox is insolvent), but I personally think there aren't enough people anymore willing to put new real money in, most people know Bitcoin by now and know its uses (or lack thereof).

It's sad for the sheeple but great for traders like myself, who are in BTC trackers.

When the price rose above about 20 people started assuming we were in another bubble. Looking back now, we see were not in a bubble, we were and still are in a sustained upward movement, and the crash from 265 to 50 was just a minor correction along the upward growth path.

Can we have two crashes in one year?

This is not a bubble. Adoption in China is going on.

April's crash and panic would not happen if we had more than one exchange (gox).

Will somebody mention the difficulty jump from 7,673,000 in April to 267,731,249 today and above 350,000,000 in 3 days tops?
if the price was above 200$ with ~8mil difficulty where should it be today?

P.S. I'm Greek by the way :)

sure

Difficulty and price are not directly related.

There is no bubbles, there is only bear traps :D

Yes but they are loosely related and you can't ignore a 35 (and soon 50) times jump in difficulty.

We have been in a bubble from April until now, a reverse bubble.

Sure, two bubbles in one year looks like madness. But is this madness? No, THIS IS BITCOIN

Corrected.

Is there any sort of a basis for the strong hands / weak hands theory? Like, something tangible / observable? So many people state this "fact", but it just seems like a wild assumption to me.

It's obvious that big crashes shake out weak hands, leaving strong hands, almost by definition.

What is your definition of adoption? Is it just entry of speculators? Or something else? Because I haven't heard of anything else going on. If the former, not sure I agree.

So, no go on that? Price goes back up -- we assume that strong hands are now holding?

What's your question exactly? If by "speculators" you mean weak hands, no it's also new strong hands. It's always a mix.

Are there any indicators that suggest the weak hands/strong hands theory, or is it just anecdotal? Like, something we can observe over time?

What theory?

That when price rebounds following a crash, the new holders are less likely to sell at any given price point. Isn't that the gist of the "strong hands are now holding" statement that is constantly repeated?

The new *group of* holders, yes, as - since the last crash was particularly recent - a particularly large proportion of those holders have shown they are strong hands because they just weathered a crash. The x-factor is how many of the newly added holders are strong hands. Note that the requirement includes that they continue holding for a significant amount of time, like a few months. Put another way, what looked like pie-in-the-sky prices in January 2013 now have built a foundation from which to grow.

So it is purely anecdotal, then? We don't really know who sold or bought, or when, nor their psychology or targets. Trying to bottom feed doesn't mean you won't dump.

It's just basic reasoning: people who didn't budge during a major crash are prima facie more likely to hold steady than those that freaked out. Strong hands generally are strong hands because they are deep-down confidet in Bitcoin's future, and weak hands are not.

Sure, those who held during the first crash are likely to hold in a second. That's not what I'm talking about. That's irrelevant as no coins are changing hands.

I'm talking about the buyers that buy up the recovery. The bottom feeders. The "weak hands" are being shaken out -- but are "strong hands" buying up the coins?

There just seems to be a circular logic here, where "buying" (period) makes one a "strong hand."

Oh, no - not necessarily. Though people get stronger handwise as they learn more about Bitcoin, and former weak hands that panicked and lost their ticket probably often get stronger and wait for a buying op.

I don't know how it feels to slam dunk your bitcoins into the trash at $2 in late 2011, or $50 in April, or $70 on the day of the SR shutdown. But it must feel pretty bad and cause some soul-searching (about Bitcoin) in many cases.

Presumably the people holding coins through the first crash were also buying more coins since, so their strong hand would have become larger. I don't know of any way to actually measure something like that, this is all based on suppositions and guessing.

If I didn't sell when the price was 250 because I think the price is going to 1000, when the price hits 50 I buy some because I believe it is at a discount.

Strong hands also = people like me who bought in at $25, sold half at $50. The only incentive I have to sell is when having X dollars today becomes more interesting to me than holding and seeing how far this goes. Crashes are irrelevant.

you can even have 3.
or 0.
or 2 in a month... that's Bitcoin  ;D

Geia sou patrida ;)

He/she is only trying to justify for himself/herself why it possibly can't crash this time and that it's completely different now. Dangerous.

Geia sou kai se esena ;)
To site stin ypografi sou einai diko sou h einai diafimisi?

shit man, if it continues like this, we will be asking us "can we have two bubbles in one day?"    :o

Two other possible things to consider.  Bitcoin currently is still inflationary since a rather large % of coins keep getting created every day.  A large amount of ASIC manufacturers need to convert BTC to fiat and a large number of ASIC buyers need to cash out their losing bets on most recent ASIC buys.

This doesn't change fact that you need much more that 200$ to mine 1BTC or 200000$ to mine 1000BTC.

Chart showing (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1zig5-minzczsg2013-4-12zeg2013-04-12ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl) that in one day bitcoin can crash 50%, rise 100%, crash 50% and again raise 100%, with high volume, in the biggest and best exchnge MtGox.

50% isn't a crash in bitcoin world. It is high volatility get used to it.

Diafimisi!

Kane join an 8es to group mou sto FB:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/UbiCrypt

Na ta leme k apo ekei!

I would use the following:

<20% daily fluctuation
20-35% flashcrash
35-65% middle-of-the-move correction
65%-90% once-per-year event
>90% epic crash

I agree :)

This rally might have been the real dead cat bounce. Bitcoin market is growing up and things take more time than they used to.

Back in Apr. there were so many people who dumped their coins at the first sign at trouble. As I remember it was Gox being shutdown for a short time which started the mass sell off at the $266 peak. If an exchange went down today I highly doubt it will cause a panic sell. I am just comparing the buyers back then with the buyers today who are of a much different mentality.

we just did ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Just growing pains.  Over time the rises and falls will be less dramatic percentage wise.  If the trade value falls to $100 and then rises back to $200 you've lost nothing as long as you still have your coins.  Look at the longer term picture rather than quick buck speculation and you may be rather pleased at the outlook.

The paradox in that statement hurts my brain.

What are you telling me here? We going sub-50 levels?  ???

Yes. I don't think this is a certainty, but I think it's possible, maybe even likely.

Everyone is always trying to "define" everything.

How about this theory? --->  Bitcoin is simply in a phase where it grew to he 140's, consolidated, sprang to the 220s, and cam back down to the 170s.   That's just as or more plausible than a 4 month dead cat bounce.