Bitcoin Forum

This may be a dumb question... but still I wonder:

Other than buying with fiat, are there any strategies to increase BTC holdings? What kind of trading would be involved?
 
Thanks!

You would need to do margin trading -- that is:
 -borrow USD based on your BTC holdings
 -use that borrowed money to buy BTC
 -if/when the price goes up, close the margin position by selling the coins purchased with borrowed money.
 -use the USD profits to buy some new coins to expand your holdings
 -that new enlarged position is the basis for further USD loans.

You pay a daily interest charge on the borrowed money (that charge is called 'swap'). If the coins go up by a bigger average daily percentage than the money you borrow (plus exchange fees in and out of the position), then you make money. If not, you loose money. This is leveraged trading so you have to be careful, you can loose a lot if you are not careful/lucky.

This type of trading can be done on bitfinex.

Buy low sell high then buy low again.

If you have some bitcoins you can invest in bitcoin stocks. By buying low/selling high and collecting dividends, you can gain more bitcoins just like investors in traditional stocks gain more dollars by investing dollars. For more information check out mpex.co (http://mpex.co) and havelockinvestments.com (http://havelockinvestments.com)

Start a Bitcoin paid service.

You could also sell things for bitcoins. Sell old stuff on BitMit. Or buy raw materials using bitcoin and then sell finished products for more bitcoin.

my favourite strategy is to create services that accept bitcoin. They are both profitable and make bitcoin market bigger, also by increasing people knowledge about bitcoin.
speculation and lending are both risky and useless for everybody else than you and don't add anything for bitcoin community.

I have picked some up mining and day trading on cex.io

This is the question for which mining was intended as an answer. It is possible, but you must be both clever and lucky. One or the other is not enough.

buy up some altcoins while the price is depressed because of the BTC rally.

you can get 1000 litecoins for just about 10 BTC now.  just a few months ago it would have cost 20-30 BTC for that amount. 

when scrypt fpga's come out and litecoin receives more acceptance its only a matter of time before the speculators favor LTC once again. 

then sell for BTC and hold. 

- Borrow USD using BTC as collateral.
- Use a service like broker1 or btc.sx
- Shortsell altcoins
- Invest in a BTC denominated asset.

You forgot whoring out your signature ;)

Yes I'm an expert in that.

But I thought the OP wanted to invest BTC. There are plenty of ways of making BTC other than investing.

Thanks for all excellent and very quick replies. By their intelligence I am pleased to realise that the question was not so dumb after all.

Many thanks for all the input. Excellent leads to follow from most of the posts, especially those that put emphasis on promoting the use of (and providing services with) bitcoin.

Best option IMO. Litecoin is strong, and despite what a lot of BTC enthusiast seem to think, it does bring a certain amount of benefit to the crypto-scene without much drawback. See this reddit post for a good summary:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bxrrw/playing_devils_advocate_why_bitcoin_will_crash_to/c9bhvme

Yes there are too many alts now, but I don't see why there isn't room for two coins, or maybe even three or four. (Primecoin is interesting too.)

Lending.

This was fun, and extremely profitable, 2 weeks ago when you could actually borrow USD on Bitfinex for a "reasonable" APR. 

You can also lend on Bitfinex. Lent BTC for shorting is paid back +interest paid in BTC.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned gambling yet. "Just-Dice" is a fair spot to play.

Other than that - Investing, Lending, 'Shorting' (converting to Fiat), and buying up Litecoin are all good examples.

Buy Mastercoins - the only other coin which while BTC rallied went upwards.
It reached x14 it's initial price this week!!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApGPLGUd5ZCzdHFxbnhHQjBDSDVKamY5UHlWdkNMNWc&usp=sharing#gid=1

Check the first page too (order tab).

Gambling will generally lose you coins, not earn you.

I mean, I suppose you could be like "ok, I'm going to martingale ONCE" and be practically assured a profit, but if you take into account the minute chance you will lose everything, your expected return is still negative.

I certainly agree, but we're just talking "strategies" to increase Bitcoin holdings..of which I'd argue gambling (like investing in random Securities) fits right in. Since there's no "sure thing" in Bitcoin, that leaves both Investing and Lending open to risks that may just put them on par with gambling anyway.

Gambling is a pretty good strategy to consistently lose money. It's not one to make money unless you're the house.

Thanks. Checking Mastercoins at the moment, but can't really understand it's benefits yet.

I think it's BTC blockchain SPAM.

Let's say you wanna spend 10BTC in Mastercoins.

Trade wisely the 8BTC and invest the other 2 just in case...

No need to go in depth of what it is.

Though long story short we have 2 major features with MSC:

1) Pegged currencies (risky)
2) Distributed currency/stock exchanges, distributed e-commerce

BTCT,MtGox,SilkRoad on roids!!

great way to lose money by investing in something you don't even know what it is.
But going back to gambling, one can profit by actually creating a simple gambling site or buy one already completed and advertise it like in normal business.

Sure, I already made my initial investment back at x10 and now enjoying the ride!

FYI I am a programmer and I can tell that the devs working on it atm are some of the best, especially Tachikoma.

Compared to the shit foundation only gmaxwell is bright enough...