Bitcoin Forum

We all know by now that the bitcoin bubble is slowly deflating - new interest is directly proportional to bitcoin's value, and the vast majority of interested individuals have already adopted the early beta of this digital currency.

What percentage loss have you taken converting assets to bitcoin?  What keeps you from converting your currency back to paper money?

Disclaimer:
I personally believe that people that buy into things like bitcoin and gold are destined for the looney bin or early divorce when they wipe themselves out, so I may not take your response seriously and you may be made fun of.

I'm guessing there a lot of people here who mine bitcoins to sell but have never bought any, which of course relates to the price decline. Spending a big chunk of 'real' money on bitcoins was always a stupidly risky move but I guess it paid off for a few people. Gold on the other hand can be very low risk if you don't subscribe to the much-maligned 'buy high, sell low' school.

I think "buy high, sell low" deserves to be maligned at every opportunity; one should never do that unless out sheer desperation to raise liquid capital.  What are you trying to say here?

I lost about $14, or 0.05% of total investments

I've lost minus 18% ;)

Only that putting money into gold is not a very likely way for someone to "wipe themselves out" financially unless they make some very bad moves subsequently out of desperation or panic. It was in reponse to this quote:

If gold prices tank, it's pretty safe to just buy more because it's virtually guaranteed they will recover eventually. Bitcoin prices on the other hand could go down and never really come back up.

48%

I've been accumulating since somewhat North of $15.  A driving force for me is that I wanted to be sitting on some BTC obtained before any potential legislation against doing so came into effect.  The price decline of BTC puts me in the red on a majority of my holdings, but I have not computed the exact percent.  It's a sunk cost and thus not worth wasting much energy over.  Getting $$$ to the exchanges has cost me about %1 (a bit more early on when I was testing the waters) and, what, .5% in trading fees.

Since I will not play in paper instruments as long as the SEC is 'regulating' them, my main alternatives are property, $$$, and PM's.  PM's have been good to me since the early 2000's but I want to diversify.  I can afford to  speculate in BTC.  I see an outside chance that they will pay off in the event that there is a $$$ crisis and/or that BTC becomes illegal (noting what becoming illegal did to the value of an easily grown weed as one of countless examples.)

No losses yet but I am pretty chicken when it comes to taking risks with money I made via mining.
Gains have been very very slim since I decided to trade.
So you could basically say, for all intents and purposes, I am even on trading speculation. No loss, no gain.

Oh Hai Look! I found a quarter on the ground. I am up now.

I'm making a profit. Granted, my positions are pretty short lived

I've made $2k riding the ups and downs, so about 30%.  :)

The prevailing assumption seems to be that 'mining' does not equate to buying BTC with money, but I think it's really the same thing. The only practical difference is that when mining, you're 'buying' your coins at a discount to the current market value (at the current difficulty and 0.10 / kWh electricity, you're effectively paying something over $2/BTC). That does not account for the cost of capital required to commission the mining rig in the first place, which increases the effective risk further.

The closer the value of the BTC comes to the underlying cost of energy required to mine the coins (if profit margins get very low due to some unforseen price decline), the more 'speculative' mining operations become. In that sense, they are just like a buy-and-hold approach to buying with cash on Mt. Gox or any other open market.

I did a bit of trading.  Buy in and wait until the market rises 10% before selling.  Not sure about the percentage, but I made some money.  I am not buying any bitcoins at the moment however.  Whatever I mined was sold in the $20s and teens.  Ah, good times.  Fondly remembered.

loss?  im up about 20%  :D         

there is still plenty of profit to be made daytrading (and i use a bot for that), doesnt matter if the price goes up or down...as long as it moves. it requires exactly 0 effort on my part.

as an added bonus, btc got me interested in forex...since btc trading is automated for me, i can focus on learning that now (while still scalping profits on btc).

I lost a bunch, gained a bunch, and now am better than even with all of my machines paid for in full.

I've made about $1k profit from market volatility! More recently though, every time I would get further ahead, I would have a buy high sell low moment and I would be back where I started! So I gave up on the whole daytrader thing!  :D
I'm now just waiting for a low to buy back in! Right now, is NOT it!

Why is everyone here responding they made money and not lose it? You are not helping the op trying to have members participate in giving disinformation on our own forum..  ::)

I've been in stock market for a while and one thing I learned is nobody would admit their losses in an online community. OP is basically wasting his time :)

Bought most of my BTC when they were under a dollar. Do the math.

Most likely it's those who lost who don't care to post. Those who made money don't mind saying so.

I think it depends on when you started. If you started speculating/mining in June... good luck! Earlier, you're probably in good shape. I started before the run-up and I wish I had bought more machines then instead of playing it safe and buying a few at a time. But then there are those people who spent $20000 in June...

+1

I started in june XD. Still made profit

If you started mining in the begining of June (like I did), you should be fine since your rigs should have been paid off. Now whether you should continue to mine depends on your power rate.

If you bought bitcoin in June as an investment, goood luck..

Not investment, short term trading

Started in June, up almost 400%.

Bitcoin was traded as high as $30, with decent volume. Yet nobody would admit they bought at that price.

All you can see here is people bragging about their gains, same thing you can see in a penny stock forum.

BTW, I don't give a damn about people who claim they made any profit, unless they can prove it. 90% of short-term traders lose money and that should apply to the bitcoin market as well. I do respect people who admit their loss as most of people won't have the courage to do so.

People 'bragging' about gains falls in line with the OP.

Profit can be described in terms of a loss thanks to a handy minus symbol.

Enough BS. Because of people like you, I see no future of bitcoin...

i boldly bought in at 18. then some more at 22. in the long,slow slide i bought more at 13.
then i started some daytrading, which brought me down to an average investment of 10.5. i sold everything at 8.8 now waiting to buy back at the bottom.
so my loss is about 16%. - the total investment was in the low single digits of my total savings.

see? somebody admitted it.

what is even more embarrassing is i first heard about bitcoin august 2010, but decided i am too busy to further investigate it.
but i don't think it was stupid. i lost even more money percentage wise in the stock market recently, and that was recommended by my bank. its all a big gamble. don't put in it what you can't afford to lose.

I have to wonder if the people who bought at 30 have already sold. So disgusted with bitcoin they have left
and no longer wish to post on the forums. Therefore the people who are still posting have a one sided view and
tread very carefully when trading/mining/etc...

I'll be the first to admit that my primary motivation is trading and interest in the usefulness of the currency itself is secondary.

But, I've sold marketplace products for BTC.  I've contributed to the economy and plan to do so in the future.

I'll be the second one to admit a loss then.   I speculate on the "Tuesday effect" having noticed weekly highs are more likely on Tuesday in the AM mountain time than any other time of the week.  So I sell 80% of my accumulated position by Wed.  This is speculation.

Last week I was too busy to sell.  I'm now looking at around a 30% loss on a week's worth of coins.

And I'm going to do it again!   Muahaha.  Because doing the same (losing) thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of a successful trader.

+ about 500 percent since late april, then got a bot, only investing my initial amount + about 100 percent again.

then got all my money out, and just watch the steady decline... was fun, but the ” goldrush” times are over...

So, you invested $28,000? Did you put that in directly as cash or did you spend some of it on mining equipment?

I am down about ~35%.

I got in in early July when it "came down" to $14.25.

Had I stayed in I would be down almost 50% but I have been jumping in and out based on watching things.

I have a target amount of BTC though and will do small trading until I reach that goal. It has gone up since I started so I am pleased.

Looking long term I know it will go up quite a bit in the long term.

Well, I'm up about 1000% which really sucks because with 20-20 hindsight I should have sold more when I was up 4000%

IM sure most people have lost, its not that hard to comprehend that only the people that starting mining in 2010, or very early 2011, made real cash.  Or if you got lucky and bought at 5 t0 7 bux and sold when they hit the 30 mark for a day or so.  Outside of that, day trading, which I do, or selling products or services for bitcoins do not really make you any cash.  Even if you can buy at freaking 7 and sell at 9, you have to sell so many coins to make it worth it.  So unless you have 1000s of dollars to play with, risk, then you wont make money day trading with bitcoin.  THe hope is that bitcoin keeps getting better, and stronger so bitcoins become back to 30 or 40 bux a coin, which is where it should be with the cost of equipment and electricity to mine and we can break bitcoins down into fractions so it would be great.  I dont think we will see that price point for a long time if ever, but we can all hope cant we.

i lost 99.5% interest in my other hobbies when i bought into bitcoin :P