Bitcoin Forum

I come to think that we can't fall massively below 5,000 dollars per BTC - if ever - unless some major whale - of the Mt. Gox trustee's scale - decides to cash out. I base my assumption on the premise that people who bought coins at high prices like over $12-$15k won't be selling at prices below some psychological limit because selling at such prices will be pointless and their only viable option will be to continue holding. So it is not just about demand building up, it is also as much about supply running dry at lower prices. That could potentially lead to less volatility, at least temporarily until a new long-term trend gets established.

You have a point and because of so much money at stakes, I don't think that the whales will simply not take the opportunity to purchase more at a price of $6400 that's why the price didn't go down to $5K as want many pundits predicted. Well, its possible, with FUD, however, there isn't one right now we still live a day.

Of course there will be holders, and no matter what the price, they will be holding and won't cut their losses by selling it. Those who sold and cut losses are stupid enough and didn't used their common sense, specially newbies, irrational buyers.

I would say that most of the $15k/mainstream public already sold to avoid higher loses. And that's why the price crashed.

Maybe they are. Or maybe they bought at $19k just to sell at $15k. Would you be holding until now?

I'm a hodler no matter what, but I can't call someone who sold at an obvious downtrend to rebuy lower 'stupid'.

that's not how market psychology works. you're being far too rational. irrational despair and exuberance dominate markets, and emotions dominate traders.

so here's what usually happens: those people who bought at $15k? they think rationally like you for quite some time. but the price drops and drops and eventually, they start to wonder if the price will ever recover. then the crash accelerates. panic ensues. these once rational hodlers who were so strong at $8000 are suddenly so much weaker at $5000 and below.

these are the bulls that sell the bottom on high volume in bitcoin's classic v-bottoms. then they provide lots of buying power on the way up when they want to recover their coins. you should only devote yourself to hodling if you can actually keep your cool during crashes and avoid selling into bottoms.

I tend not to underestimate the price of bitcoin; do not think it can't fall below 5k cause it can happen. No matter how you calculate it, cryptocurrency prices are unpredictable. And don't think that people won't sell, there are a lot of people who are already giving up since the price of bitcoin have seems to remain in price between 6k-7k. Some of them may rush off to sell now so as to gain a little

We don't need to rush things, 2017 maybe a good year for crypto, but before that happens there is a long wait, it was not instantly happened so better calm and set amount you wanted your coin to reach. Think of it as a long term investment.

Patience and self control is the way on how we can handle things over, indeed that's good to be calm but even how we are able to do it the emotions will follow most of the time. Rushing this isn't right because we might fall into trap of regrets, and the worst is you possibly will panic which could end up losing all what you've been saving for a long time to make it an asset. Somehow having long term investment can be ruined through emotions, and while uncertainties of bitcoin's price kept on bouncing up and down we should be strong enough to take it as an emotional challenges. Learn how to be brave and stay focus on the future profit, because it really needs sacrifices before reward can be yours.

that's not how market psychology works. you're being far too rational. irrational despair and exuberance dominate markets, and emotions dominate traders.

so here's what usually happens: those people who bought at $15k? they think rationally like you for quite some time. but the price drops and drops and eventually, they start to wonder if the price will ever recover. then the crash accelerates. panic ensues. these once rational hodlers who were so strong at $8000 are suddenly so much weaker at $5000 and below.

these are the bulls that sell the bottom on high volume in bitcoin's classic v-bottoms. then they provide lots of buying power on the way up when they want to recover their coins. you should only devote yourself to hodling if you can actually keep your cool during crashes and avoid selling into bottoms.

That's what happens because during price runs, bull or bear, it's emotion that is in control, not logic. If you can separate the two then you're already halfway being a great trader.

But it also means that we are not on the phase of "capitulation" yet. We do not know how strong those people are psychologically and if they do not need that money for their needs in the real world. Some of them might have loaned the money to buy Bitcoin.


Less volatility is not necessarily good if you want Bitcoin's price to go up. Without volatility, the price would stay flat.

True. These are the people who spam threads about "will the price go up?" or "you need to remain calm", because they are already desperate and need confirmation that people are not as desperate as they are, they need some comfort. Or then they say this is a "correction" to feel better and deny the reality of facts (a correction wont go more than 25%, anything below that is a bear market).

They wonder if the price will recover, because they dont know about the fundamentals, or they know, but dont pay any attention to it. They want quick profits, they are in only to increase their fiat money, thats why they are triggered by tether printing.

I think many investors like whales already knows that, That is why I think they already sold some of their coin when it is higher than $15,000 But this is a manipulation even if they lost so much they will sure get it back after the market crash do you really think they are not ready for this to happen and if we keep on underestimating them from manipulating the market we had already lost if many would not keep on holding their bitcoin, I really think there are many weak hand holders that already sold their bitcoin not only those whales but some middle class ones, I really think if they want to manipulate the market of crypto they will sacrifice something and they would gain later when the value recovers.

Am I seeing this wrong or not? I see the article created there are very similar similarities as above can be called copy paste, forgive me if I have an error here.

I think we will see BTC under $5k at some stage of this dump. However, if the price does go below $5000 it shouldn't end up at that point for too long and a recovery will happen soon enough. So there is honestly nothing to worry about, since we're already near bottom at the $6-7k level.

This is simply because of the fact that I feel like a lot of people who bought in at such high prices are actually newbies that panic sell easily.

I disagree with the comment about the price will recover because of the supply drying up and not the demand going up, because IMO it's probably the opposite. There are a ton of people including me who would happily buy at a level such as $3-4k which builds effective support for the market at that level. So yes, it is indeed limited, but probably not $5k which is just a couple thousand away from our level right now.

Well, somehow I thought I wouldn't need further explanations but it seems that many people didn't understand what I meant. Okay, I will try to explain my point in detail below.

People often act without thinking twice, but this is not the case when prices have been low for nearly 3 months already. For example, you bought at $19k and you didn't sell at 15k, 12k, and so on, then selling at 5k and below is psychologically meaningless to you because you already accepted your loss. You have your capital halved and then halved again, and now you have like 25% left of it. To me, it makes no sense selling in these circumstances because it is unlikely that Bitcoin will fall substantially below relative to the loss you already suffered. Indeed, it can fall from 5k down to 1k, but the new loss will be pretty irrelevant to you psychologically because by that time you have already lost most of your capital anyway. In other words, it's no use crying over spilt milk.

Yeah good thinking, but no matter what loses are loses and the person who experience this has had pretty hard punches on the financial and emotional aspect does not matter when he felt it but it is a matter of he has undergone the lost itself.

Interesting perspective, but there are plenty of reasons why people would want to cash out anyway. Let's not forget that Bitcoin only reached the $5k level around September a year ago, so chances are majority of people in Bitcoin bought below that level. They break even at different points, so you never really know when they spill their milk, and you never really know when they'd want to dump. I totally get your point though.

It would do everyone good to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The reality is that Bitcoin is speculative, and could therefore dip anywhere.

160 000 BTC and BCH is a lot of selling pressure.

For big players it might be more profitable to let the market panic and dump from this while scooping up cheap coins on the open market and participate in the auctions (at this point i believe something like this will happen).

Absolutely right. Furthermore we shouldn't forget that costs for mining BTC may be at a level around $3k-$4k. So even some big miners have still lots of room for shenanigans. Don't think it's just big retail investors or funds who can play games. The miners are heavily involved as well.
Markets tend to stay longer irrational than you or we can stay solvent. So never over invest and or think to rational and believe you know what's the market going to do. You'll get burned very bad with that kind of mentality.

The major whales won't cash out completely.  They are quite happy with gobbling up profits on a daily basis.  So a lot of investor's money is now going to feed whales.  That's why I won't buy now.

This is by far the most plausible. We know for a fact that a lot of new money came into the market during and after December, especially with futures lending Bitcoin a further air of "unignorable" buys. It's only sensible to think that these traders would have set stop losses above 10k and those who bought in at or above 10k stopped out around 8 and 9. That's definitely pressuring the price down, and it's just the gift that keeps on gifting...

Pointless to call traders stupid when they're practising perfectly sound risk mitigation strategies.

I believe that is incorrect. Doesn't it cost $8000, give or take a few hundred, to mine 1 Bitcoin? Can a miner make a comment on this and explain all the facts?

Speculation based on false information is pointless.

I disagree because this doesn't sound realistic to me on many points.
for example if someone is holding ever since $12k+ and price falls down they will sell for sure and when it reaches a ridiculously low price like lower than $5k they will surely surely sell! unless they have not bought bitcoin for profit! and that is unrealistic for most people so the sell pressure will start up IF a big dump were to happen.

but a sell pressure doesn't mean a drop or a bigger drop on its own. a sell pressure only means more sells, it can go either way depending on the buy support and how that can cancel the sells. in this case I do believe that there is an increasing buy support as the price goes down. for example if we need 100BTC to crash the $20k price, we will need 1000BTC to crash $15k and 10000BTC for $10k and it will be 100000BTC to crash $5k (arbitrary amounts of bitcoin to show the point). and whales do run out of bitcoin at some point since you can never go against the tide forever. there will be a point where you will be pushed back by the tide (the tide being the total strength of the buys).

so you are correct that the downtrend is limited but the limitation is because more people are buying more bitcoin as the price goes lower so it prevents the downtrend to continue forever and eventually will reverse the trend for good.

Agree. There is always a limit to how low one can go and would instead start to buck the trend and play it long term instead. Hit the moon or go for broke if there's nothing more to lose.

As Tryninja mentioned, most people have already dumped their coins at way higher levels by my knowledge so your theory that people will not be dumping at prices below $5k is not really plausible to me, at least. Long term holders most likely wouldn't have bought at $20k in the first place.

What will happen is, at around the $5k mark, demand for bitcoin will start to pick up.

Right now bitcoin is still in free fall. Even though it's going up in price today, it's going to continue the bearishness we saw as soon as this small rally is over.

We could see prices below $5k temporarily, but it'll quickly adjust back up to $4-5k. That's around a 30-40% reduction from right now, which means that $4-5k seems close to being the bottom for me.

I am also interested in this topic. some people say cost of mining is around 3 to 4k and some 7 to 8k. The reality is that since we have been at this prices last years, hashrate has nearly tripled. So at the same prices as 4 months before, miners are not as profitable, they have a lot more competition.

I don't know what to think anymore about bitcoin price. I suspected a crash after we had a brilliant 2017, but I dindn't think that the price would be consistenly so low for the last couple of weeks. Lets wait and see what happens.

Competition does not affect the cost. If bitcoin mining costs 3-4K dollars, this amount does not change except for the region in which the production occurs due to the cost of electricity. It seems to me that the rise in the price of bitcoin will be very soon. If miners are really interested in the prospects of bitcoin that now need to negotiate with developers and come up with a mechanism in which bitcoin will be used in trade.

Many people have bought BTC when it was in the ATH prices. Seems txns volume is still low compared to Dec highs. Everyone just weathering this correction out. Good opportunity to buy now since it is way lower than the 10K mark.

It does not affect your cost, your electricity bill if you dont add more rigs will stay the same, however price you pay per mined bitcoin will go up. You will need more time to produce it and it means more electricity per bitcoin.

The demand will surely be higher if bitcoin price continue to go down.  Investors will flood and buy bitcoin which will positively affect the market price and that is what we have been waiting for.  Anyways,  it is also possible that there will be sellers if the price reach $6K- $7K which I would like to hope to only have a small effect on the bitcoin price.

The price have shown progress for the past few days but still we cannot depend on that the price will continue rising for the next weeks or months.

I worry efficiency will lead to a negative not this base line price people suppose.    In any normal commodity industry the market price can fall below cost to produce.    What would happen in Bitcoin case is the miners now longer operate.

To me this says they switch to a more efficient process like Proof of stake not that somehow the tail wags the dog and a minimum price must happen.    

Heres something relevant I spotted, btw capitulation is considered a marker to a true bottom ie. irrational selling, it can happen.

https://i.imgur.com/5zkzkJi.png
https://i.imgur.com/ErX1vtrg.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/rhlNI3ug.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cDQxN8Ug.jpg

I don't see how you are disagreeing with my point. If you read my post carefully, you will see that I don't say it is just the supply drying up. Actually, I say it is both the demand going up because of lower prices and the supply tapering off on the same account. To sum it up, at some point in price and time we should see a convergence event where both these tendencies meet and match each other. That will be a quasi-stable price from which an entirely new trend should develop in due course.

I agree to you because not all people are crazy panicking when price goes down they much think what is for the better and who's person that buy a lot of bitcoin sell it in low price without any profit. We need to be patient because it's not all the time is bitcoin is on down price.

It's difficult to predict.
Seems the harder it is to tempt holders to sell, the lower btc would have to go to shake out weak hands.

If people bought at 5k and below, they more than likely had already sold at 10k, then bought again, and so on, till the December peaks. Apart from that, a lot of people were buying on the way down to 10k and below - with 12k being the major support back then, otherwise we wouldn't see so much resistance right now. These days Bitcoin seems to be stuck in a pretty narrow range, and whenever the price makes an effort to rise higher, it invariably retreats soon thereafter. We have seen this cycle repeat at least a few times during the last two weeks.

In short, neither up nor down.

If someone wants to sell their many bitcoin we can be lower than $5k as we had experience this is a volatile in nature and we had no control in every investors decision if they want to give blood in the market. This is a business with billions of money circulating at crypto and nobody wants to be a losser not unless a dumbass investor.

Do not worry, there will be no other banning that might affect the market since, China, Japan, Fb, twitter, google, the biggest name already done in it. In the time it will recover and all traders will be back on track.

Bitcoin has been shown over the years to be absolutely immune to what technical analysts tend to call "psychological levels". I remember that over the past year there was too much speculation about what would happen once the bitcoin price broke the historical high around $1,200. Many also watched with expectation the moment when the marks of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 fell, and bitcoin broke those barriers easily and without fright. Therefore, I do not see any solid reason to think that the $5,000 price now can work as a sufficiently strong support level in case a massive sell-off occurs.

you have to consider a couple of factors:
1. difficulty (which everyone forgets)
2. bitcoin price
3. electricity and other costs.

2 and 3 are easy to measure since the numbers are simply found and 3 is a fixed number. but you have to measure how long does it take to earn a fixed amount, it can be finding of 1 block or earning 1BTC or earning in fiat like $1000 or something like that. and this is constantly changing due to difficulty adjustments.

ps. I don't think cost of mining is important at all! because you may think it is $7000 now and say price won't fall below that but it may fall and then if it falls below $7000 the cost of mining will be reduced to $6000 and so on.

In fact, that point I mentioned right in the OP, which you included in your quote, by the way. I highlighted that we are not invulnerable or immune to the impact that a big whale could easily deliver. But then the price would plunge however low, even to single digits if, for example, Satoshi himself comes out of his hideout and drops his stash of coins on our heads. But there are more than enough bearwhales beside him who can dump the price below what we could reasonably think of.

I keep on buying when the price dip through $7000 and sell a small amount when the price is over $8,000. I have made some profit by doing that.

That is ever the best summary to all the things going on in the market right now than I have ever seen.
A lot of new investors may not know how volatile the market is or how the whales can actually make the market drop to a huge extent just to shake the weak hands off.

One thing however they always forget to know is that these people know how to read emotions on the chart and they play on that since they have the upper hand anyway and anyone who falls into such trap as an investor will really have a lot of blame to push on themselves when the time comes.

These topics and arguments emerge occasionally now and then where some people claim that the price can't fall below some cost of mining. Obviously, this is nowhere near how things stand in reality. First, there is no certain cost of mining because every miner has different costs even if his fellow miners have the same electricity prices or the same equipment. And then, miners don't dictate prices, prices are determined by the market, while the role and importance of miners has long seized to be a factor there.

As far as I am concerned, I feel we are just going to only have the last phase of drop before entering consolidation. Yes, we cannot start assuming for the market, but I do not see that strong hands dropping the market for now. A little bit lower than $6k could be possible, who knows ?

The bears may still want to act on the market, no one also knows, but one thing I know is that the market will definitely recover, and I am sure those who have been holding from the peak of last year already know these facts and really would not care these fluctuations. OP may bring many reasons for this downtrend but I too never care them because I just focus on simply holding my bitcoins for the prices hundred time of current levels.

"cash outs" such as Mt Gox trustee never caused any drop in the past to want to cause a drop now. the drop would have happened nonetheless and in case you have forgotten they started selling their coins when price was a little above $4000 last year and it continued as the price went up to $20k.

not at all. you are forgetting the panic sellers and how they work.
the thing about panic sellers is that they don't understand how the market works. they buy something and hope for it to go up so for example if one of them bought at $15k and price started going down they still hope for it to go up, at some point as the price goes lower they can no longer continue to hope because as i said they don't have any understanding of how market works so they eventually dump at a huge loss which is always near the bottom and before the reversal.

again i disagree. it is always about both supply and demand. right now there is an equilibrium between the two which is why we have been seeing an stable price for the past 30 hours. when this equilibrium is broken price starts to move in that direction.

Aww! That’s somehow cute. It seems you are new to the crypto market or the one who is not investing too much into the market. This is nothing wrong that you invest a lot into bitcoin but investing little amounts and making little profits on regular basis is the better than investing too much and waiting over the time span of months. Enjoy the good profit you have earned from the market of bitcoin.

People had been saying essentially the same when the price first reached 12k - after it plunged from an ATH of 20k. It didn't work out very well in the end, though it was a good and sound - if sound is the right term to be used here - dead cat's bounce when the price went as high as 15-16k. It turned out to be the last chance to get out mostly unscathed for those who bought at the peak in December. Then there was a good deal of talk about "consolidation phase" at and around 9-10k, and now we are trading sideways below 7k.


It will recover in due course but there are many questions as to when it will happen, from what levels exactly, and which coins will recover better than the others and which won't recover at all. It is not just about Bitcoin.

of course people who buy for $ 12000 - $ 15000 will not sell in situations like this, they will tend to hold it. how much would they lose if they sold it? very much, but I do not think prices will continue to fall any further. the price will begin to grow slowly although still in the shadow with a very strong fluctuations.

I'm not sure I understand what you refer to here. As far as I know, there was no selling of this scale in the past at prices so high. The FBI auctioned off a few dozen thousand bitcoins in the past but that was an off-market deal anyway and it didn't affect the price for obvious reasons.


Are you sure you know how panic selling actually works? I think there are no more panic sellers left on the market by now, in massive numbers. The vast majority of them should be gone already. That likely explains why we no longer see flash crashes - in the absence of bearwhales of the Mt. Gox custodian scale, at least.


The price can stop falling as either supply dries up or demand builds up. I'm talking about the process, not the end result in this case.

Those who are bitcoin supporters, I don’t think so they are worried about any other coin or they are interested in updates about any of the altcoins. They thing is simple, with the increase in the market conditions of bitcoin every altcoin is going to show some improvement.

So this is why people who have even invested into altcoins are concerned about the rise in the prices of bitcoin for estimating their coins value.

The Mt gox coins were never written off but the Satoshi coins after this period of time are considered out of circulation permanently.  So any return of the OG would be both surprising, no doubt welcomed but very much introduce a giant source of coins back into the market which would not be bullish.

The effect of the Mt gox coins is like water into sand, it brings liquidity and higher supply then normal leading to a lower price for that length of selling.   Its not changing the underlying value but buyers are more able to find supply.  The real weakness at present I think originates with the end of the tax year.   That event unites sellers into a specific program of selling not normally present in the market, its especially able to lower the price at that time.

Again its not altering the worth only the market availability and price for this time.    I think this is a natural process, we are all familar with profit taking even within a bullish trend this occurs as traders naturally hold more for short periods of time then they can own longer term.  

I agree with you and I disagree with the prophet of doom that keeps saying bitcoin is going to fall below $3,000. If the current downward movement continue and we fall below  $5,000 it means even those that buy at $17,000 , $14,000, $10,000 , $9,000 and $7500 has started to sell their positions and that may cause complete dump of the price.

Satoshi is not the only one with a huge stash of coins. I've read somewhere around here that there are a few guys roaming in the wild who have more than 100k bitcoins in the wallets. What if one of them decides to cash out one day? Before the Mt. Gox dude, it was all theory and speculation, but now it is no longer the case. It is a new reality, a reality where one whale crashes the price dozens of percentages in a matter of days. Surely not something to discard or write off in your investment decisions.

Your assumption is very true I also believe the bitcoin value will not drop to $5000 that more demand before that happens ,moreover whales that will not want market value down to that extent then investors who should be more patient to hodl if the value gets that far

I'm going to need a source on who these people are with 100,000 bitcoin under their own control.   Somehow they've decided to never use them or employ that capital in a gambling operation or similar just left them unused ?
Without details of who it is I cant exactly decide how probable it is they would sell now and decided not to previously.

I think the very largest wallets regularly used are by business and exchanges.   Though the amount appears large, the capital is employed daily in various ways.  The value is shared by a great many individuals and all of those people have different thoughts on selling or not.

The big point in a market is not everyone agrees and certainly they dont agree all at the same time.    So buyer and sellers find various prices they are willing to part or accumulate Bitcoin at.    If we get a trend, its because there is an ongoing theme in the market population.  It often takes a long time to get to the conclusion of a trend, its not an overnight event its a process of change.

You can search the forum or wait until someone points you to the appropriate topic. I remember some dude has been claimed to have like 800k bitcoins, and he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

Anyway, you can perform a search in Google. Just fill in "biggest Bitcoin wallets owned by individuals" and you will find out everything you wanted to know about who officially ranks the highest among Bitcoin owners. Okay, I carried out the search myself and here's the list (http://time.com/money/5002207/richest-people-with-bitcoin/) of top Bitcoin holders. Ironically, Uncle Sam is listed as one of them, though I'm not sure that he cuts as an individual.