Bitcoin Forum

I'm trying to get a feel for why people are day trading bitcoin. So the question is simple - are you trading primarily to profit in coins, fiat or to hedge the fiat value of your original bitcoin investment?

I personally am trading solely to profit in bitcoin. I started originally with the intention of hedging the value of my earnings, but have given up on that. Why? If I wanted to retain fiat purchasing power, I would simply cash out immediately as soon as I received payments and never buy back, or else accept payment only in fiat.

I couldn't care less how much my coins are currently worth in fiat, as long selling at any price will yield more coins for me in the future.

Primarily in fiat, which hopefully I can eventually invest in btc.   

5:2 in favor of fiat profits so far. Interesting.

Where is both?

I wanted to try and assess which is deemed primarily more important to traders here; their fiat or their bitcoins.
If I gave a 'both' option, I think the majority of people would pick that thus muddying the results.

I agree.  I clicked fiat, b/c obviously that's what intrigued me... "USD for "nothing" I'll give that a try"

But now I believe in bitcoin, so I don't care what I get more in.  If I can use the volatility in UDS/bitcoin price to increase my overall position of BTC & USD, I'm happy.

I'm happy to own 100+bitcoins and plan to increase that to 1000 by the end of next year using bitcoins as a savings vehicle (at least until I find something I want to buy with them). 

I'm holding (most of) my Bitcoins for the day that acceptance is ubiquitous.

I'm not trying to 'profit' per-se (though it would not break my heart to do so) but I choose a radio button anyway.

At the end of the day, I am trying to balance out the wealth I have between a number of things which I anticipate could be of value under a variety of scenarios.  BTC is one of these and my main goal at this time is to get a certain percentage of my 'net worth' into them.  Fiat is the one thing that keeps coming in by virtue of having a job, so inevitably and periodically I am pumping USD into other things.

I also happen to be drawn to Bitcoin for the potential that it may have to play a part in the betterment of society generally and would be happy to take a temporary or permanent loss if it contributes to Bitcoin living up to that potential.

I clicked BTC, though I started in on this venture for this same reason. But, the longer I was in, and the more I learned about how it works, and the potential uses kept me here.

I went from trading the same pile of BTC back an forth to gain more fiat. Then I was like "F*** the dumb S***, I want as many BTC as I can get my grubby hands on". Since then, I have just been reinvesting ALL "profits" to make my BTC footprint larger.

ATM I hold mostly fiat, I guess for hedging, but every dollar will be traded back for BTC before I'm done here.

i would like to have a lot of bitcoin..

I don't do a lot of trading but when I do it is to increase my bitcoin holdings.  I mine within my means so that I don't have to sell bitcoins to pay for power.  I could easily afford to lose my investment without much harm or loss but the upside for 5-10 years down the road holds a lot of potential. Some call it hoarding, I call it savings.

Yes, where is that option?

I am up in both, from before/after my first buy-in in fiat/BTC respectively, and intend to keep it that way unless price rises well into the double-digits or fundamentals change. Still, I'm on the exchange pretty much daily.

And no, that is not the same as hedging against losses. If I win, I win; if I lose, it's gone. That's the way the game goes.

I agree, it's totally a "hobby" for me right now.  I've spent more on other hobbies.

Mind me asking when you started mining?  I'm just curious if people are still jumping into the game.  I started about June.  I see you have 22 posts, so welcome if you are new to it.  I encourage you to continue posting!

VERY interesting results. I didn't expect this, what with all the bearish sentiment around lately.

Considering that the majority here seem to be trading for bitcoin profit, most of the traders ultimately believe in the fundamentals of the technology and it's future utility, because they seem to want bitcoin more than they do fiat. I would assume that a good part of the the bearish sentiment here might be attributable to a lust for cheaper coins - the bubble deflation notwithstanding.

Are you bears hiding your true bullish nature?

http://grace.kingedwardltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/bull-bear.jpg

The exchange rate has been pretty static around the $2.20 mark for the past 10 hours. This is far longer than I would have expected from monitoring the charts these past few days. It seems that everyone is waiting patiently for the <$2 mark to get back in.

People are floundering for reasons for the price to fall further - miners are inefficient, there is no economic support for this price level, more people would have access to the coins etc etc. Many of these reasons are questionable at best, and all reek of a longing for cheap coins. Since I am aware of this hunger, then you can be sure that the big players are aware of it too.

Many of the active bearish coins on the exchanges have probably already been sold to people who have a strong desire to hold. I watched a 50k bidwall get eaten alive a few days ago. This might mean that there are very few actively trading 'bears' remaining. Just look how slowly the last fall back to $2.20 took to complete. Many people are likely now sitting on the edge just waiting for the chance to get back in.

Given this, how likely is it that we can actually get to $1.xx?

I think we might have reached the psychological bottom here. If those elusive $1.xx coins never surface and we keep hovering at just above $2, how soon do you think it will be before the bulls strip off their bear clothes and roar forwards?

I could be wrong, but I have liquidated all of my fiat holdings. This might end up being a mistake, but I am sick of trying to catch this falling knife. I would rather have a decent amount of cheap-ish coins now, than a tiny amount if I am right about this.

I started mining recently because I am fed up with fiat currency and the endless issuance of currency. I also recently upgraded my PC to a level that would facilitate bitcoin mining making it more viable. As for the current 2.20 pricepoint I too wonder if we have hit the real bottom. The people cheering for 1.xx bitcoins I think are only doing because they want to buy at this price or are bitter about what they have lost. I have done a bit of trading in the last few days but i have increased my BTC holdings by about 2%. I am reluctant to trade either way right now because I really have no idea which way the market is headed at this point.

I made a net 22% bitcoin profit over the past 5 days. Thanks bears! It was originally 30%, but I lost some in last nights spike. I am happy now to call it a day at 22%. I am going to hold these coins hard now given the situation we find ourselves in and the apparent 'bear fatigue'. My withdrawal from MtGox is waiting to be confirmed.

I would much rather be in bitcoin at the moment, because while further small falls may indeed occur there is a lot more potential for upwards movement than there is downwards movement. If the big holders did not sell when the price was high, I think they will be even LESS interested in selling at this price.

I'm not willing to take the risk of missing the boat for another few percentage points.

Thanks, I've lurked for a while but just signed up here recently. I started solo mining on my laptop in jan or feb of 2010. People will jump into the game as it suits their own interests.  I like the way mining bitcoin at this point does not incentivize huge monopolizing mining farms with the 2.XXXXXXXX price as the most are unlikely to want to speculate with so much equipment and electricity cost, yet it does encourage cooperation of smaller rigs in pools and thus wider distribution for those without time pressures.

Hookers you can get in BTC  :D.

I've always said the same thing about big holders. Selling is less and less attractive the lower we go, which means that more and more selling pressure is created simply by miners and speculators.

This is a good point but it is possible that the price is still going down another 50% so that's not only "few percentage points". However it's also possible that $2 triple bottoms and we never see $1.x again. This is why I'm also thinking of a partial re-entry at this stage. Not even thinking about all-in yet, but I think the current situation warrants a partial move.

Clearly if bitcoin were in an uptrend, all of us here would close and hold our positions in bitcoin. But with declines we negotiate ideology, speculation, and weird loyalty/abandonment issues. Personally, I prefer to hold bitcoins because they are enormously convenient and secure. The instability of the bitcoin ecosystem and the risk of site seizure or failure produces not fear of losing my bitcoin but fear of losing my fiat.

I can't make a meaningful vote; What are the results?

But compared to what they now have, it's still your money getting halved. Although I agree that the psychological effect is different.

Dead on (though I did not really get going with Bitcoin until around the time of the Mt. Gox outage thank God, and I bought a majority of my holdings on various large dips so my loss is much less than I would have thought.)  Lemme add a few things from personal perspective.

I based a lot of my decision to own Bitcoin on certain fundamentals which have really not (yet) changed.  The seeming robustness of the system, the usefulness of something which could be easily transported around the world, the non-single point of failure properties, etc.  I was dead wrong about how low the demand could get, but I've no reason to reject most of the fundamentals behind my decision.

I consider anything less than several years to be 'short-term' and did not really expect my interest in Bitcoin to be short-term.  I am only a short time into my anticipated involvement.  Again, I did not expect to lose so much USD so quickly, but I also put no more in than I could easily afford to part with.  It's just that I expected to kiss the money goodbye if Bitcoin was cracked rather than in a general market decline.  Oh well...the net effect is the same (although the market could re-bound which is more likely than if there had been a terminal exploit to the Bitcoin network.)

+1

I will admit I have invested considerable amounts of money in purchasing Bitcoins, and "high-end" gear to mine. I knew that I could loose every single red cent I put into this investment, but in the end the thing that made me take the final leap were the fundamentals.

Those have not changed.

I agree. I'm actually break-even in fiat and massively up in BTC for my direct investments, thanks to some good trading decisions. My mining investments are another story but they are close to being break-even when you take the resale value into account. But just like you, I haven't invested anything I can't afford to lose. I'm going to be involved in the Bitcoin community as long as the fundamentals stay strong, or until something even more promising comes up. What happens with the price doesn't change anything, I've always known Bitcoin is very risky as an investment vehicle.