Bitcoin Forum

Last year in november when both bitcoin and altcoins where getting really good results I bought into bitcoin. The profits seemed amazing, and working in the IT I wanted to learn more about this coin, see if it could mean anything for me apart from making some profit.

I have experience with investing, I own quite an amount of stocks so I tought it would be interesting to see how bitcoin compares with the stock market.

I invested 500€, at the time bitcoin was around 800$. For me 500€ was not a big amount, it's quite small compared to what I have in stocks. But I knew that what I invested I should be prepared to lose.
Of that amount I put half into alt coins.
One of the altcoins being Quark. You all know that story, people were shouting on the forums it would break all records. Quark was by far my biggest disappointment. It was a very poor investment on my side that I should have seen coming. But that's easy to say now ofc.
After that I decided to convert all altcoins back to bitcoin. This must have been around Christmas. I didn't made really huge profits or losses with doing so, apart from the quarkcoin. I had invested 70€ in Quark, and lost about half of that. In % this is quite high a loss.

I waited for several months, following coinmarketcap. I enjoyed watching all developments, and learned that the markets where actually quite predictable. A coin that rose with 1000% was likely to drop far more in just a few days.
I learned that like Quarkcoin, there are still plenty of scams around that trick enough people into buying and then dump (pump & dump). Auroracoin was the latest I followed. I saw it rising to what? 40$? More? Now it's back to 2$, and all the way down people were shouting that people that sold were stupid.
I also learned that the course of, alt-coins especially, can be manipulated by selling really low or buying really high.
And I learned that even the big players here, are not safe for hackers. Many sites have been hacked, and many more will be. Even if you store your bitcoins safe & local, the price will still be affected every time there is a hack.
I never really liked the fact that half of the bitcoins are owned by 100 people. In this way bitcoin is not much different then "real" money, where half of the global money is owned by 100 people.

In stocks I have a few simple rules:
- if a stock drops 10% consider to sell
- if a stock drops 20% consider to sell or have good arguments why not
- if a stock doesn't give you any profit for 3 months it is unlikely it will give you profit over the course of the year, so consider to sell

For a while I ignored this wisdom, I think the volatility of the market did affect my judgement here. It fell to over 20% loss for a few times. At one point I had a 60% loss(!), after it dropped a few times.
I was waiting and holding, thinking that it does have some potential. Then the bancrupty of MtGox went down. I couldn't ignore it anymore, I hadn't made a loss, it was down 20% and there was no sign of any good news that would allow for a recovery.
I sold, the value was at that point 670$ I took a loss of 30%.

I did enjoy the time I played around with these virtual currencies. Bitcoins are a cool & nice toy, but that's what it is, and once people stop playing with it I don't think the market will hold.

Since then I did kept checking the market seeing red figures nearly every day, with the exception of a few pump & dumb coins. Right now it's at 450$ I believe, so I feel like I made the right decision.

I wanted to write down my story. You only read success story's, people who made huge profit, who got in near the start. I wanted to show that you shouldn't invest now to make a profit. Buy it to play with it sure and find out what this coin is that everyone talks about, but since your buying in late expect to make a loss.

This is like suffering through the ups and downs of four years of college, then dropping out the day before the final exam.

Jonivdb, Sorry to hear your at a loss! BTC is a long term investment, save your BTC for a rainy day (rainy day= BTC 2500usd) pay the elect. bill and keep on mining.  ;D

I'm gonna go with... because you're a weak hand like all the others jumping ship?

Fortune favors the bold, bitch. Enjoy working for one of us in the future, while we sip our fancy vodka and receive double-blowjobs from supermodels.

Newbie teaching everyone how to lose long-term......LOL?

How to win Big long-term:
1) Don't invest more than you can afford, AND save money to buy more when it goes lower.
2) Don't follow the crowd.
3) Don't quit early when VC money is pouring in like a flood.

Do enjoy the ride, and figure out how to Love what you do for money.

How would that work?  The mind boggles (in a good way) :)

He might be talking about 2 supermodels at once, or...
Maybe one girl and his "best friend forever"  :o

Nah, It's like this,
http://i628.photobucket.com/albums/uu2/techjesse/Bad%20Boy%20Computer/30836.jpg
Hey Babe, How ya doing?  ;D

You're doing it wrong, plain and simple. Don't let the door hit you on your way out, speculator.

I like this Better!  ;D It beats my pics  :) LOL

"I own quite an amount of stocks so I tought it would be interesting to see how bitcoin compares with the stock market."
OK but BITCOIN does not pay dividends.. :)

So, you are a short-term speculator.
The less of you are in the game, the better it is.

Why did you post your speculation thread in the Bitcoin Discussion forum OP?

FeedbackLoop, I don't see him on line, maybe tomorrow he'll show up to comment. Or you could delete this entire thread! I say Buy BTC now and sat on it  ;D   

It seems like it's in correct board now.

I don't understand the criticism being levelled at speculators.

A significant chunk of Bitcoin's value is driven by speculation. A significant amount of the money made many of us over the last year or two has been because of speculation. If you're happy with speculators buying and driving up the price, you have to be just as happy when they sell.

Side note: Clear a time to buy :)

You said it pretty good actually, a lot of people *are* infact jumping ship. Since I bailed out I've seen bitcoin dropping nearly every day, in total now 30%, that shows that there are a lot of people like me making a conscious decision. Don't mistake selling now with failing to make easy money. We sell because we make a decision based on facts, facts that some people here don't want/can't see.
This is no sudden crash prices are dropping slowly, and no new money is coming in with this bad news show going on. People are selling because they see problems popping up for bitcoin on a weekly basis, and it's been a while since there has been any good news.

Just like in any fancy piece of technology the early addopters started to leave so the tech eventually dies out. This happened to the walkman, that got replaced by the ipod, and this will happen to Bitcoin.

So don't be blind to what has been happening the last months, thinking it will go to incredible heights. Support bitcoin sure, but support it with words not with your children's inheritance.

Anyway it's everyone's own choice in the end, but I just want to warn everyone not to stare at bitcoin blindly and rather look at some of the facts.

Bitcoin is good for trading the volatility. The buy and hodl days are over. You are doing it all wrong.

So, what did you end up buying with your Bitcoin currency OP?

You don't get to walk away like this without being reminded that the price is still about 3 times higher than late last year, and many times higher than that compared to a full year ago. You fucked up. This is where we point and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Nothing, ofcourse. He was "investing"... Unless you count the Euros he bought when he sold the BTC.


How about using bitcoin for what it's useful instead of treating it like a lottery/a cult/a stock? Did that ever cross you mind?

Why the quotes?

You are ofcourse here because bitcoin will make the world a better place?

Should I ask you the same question? ???


Exactly. Glad you understood.

Good news, you can buy back in today and get 140% of the coin you sold.

So you have made a lot of money when it was predictable. Why do you complain? (no, no market is predictable!)
This just unknown and likely not true. Addresses with big amounts might be a cold storage and belong to many individuals. On the other hand any individual can hold many addresses. And that half of global money (you mean a tiny percetage of all assets and wealth?) is gold by 100 individuals should be false, too.

Or you make the rule, that you buy, when a stock drops by 20% because it likely drops not further.

You just have to evaluate based on your investment horizont (longterm-shortterm) and informations where you invest your money. Are you risk avers? Can you affort to take a high risk? So you have other investments which will maybe with a 20% 10fold?

In my opinion the expected value of one Bitcoin is well above the given price. Something like: 50% it will go down to 10$ and Zero. To 50% it will 10fold. So this is green to hold/buy. I might be wrong but I take the chance!

By solving banking problems for criminals?

500$ ? It is not even a big deal. I have no idea why you even bother to write this topic.

Likely?  I have witnessed 3 stock crashes already, and one thing I have learned is: when all the news is bad, it's probably not going to get good any time soon. Some stocks recover and some stocks do not ever rise again.
So trust me it can always drop more.

Because I think there are a lot of people in my situation who take this tiny loss in silence, so I think one of these story's deserves to be told. I never said it was a big deal.

Aint a stock.

Yes, I might well be considered a "criminal" in certain jurisdictions just because I believe no authority has the right to know exactly how much wealth I have. Or because I want to send money to family overseas without excessive restrictions. Or because I simply want financial freedom.

When you thought you would "win" big money that didn't seem to bother you, but now all of a sudden it does bother you. At least you've now shown us your true face: the face of an hypocrite.

Sorry that you lost money.


short story.

Bitcoin is not a stock. If you buy bitcoin for money then you should use it for sending it to someone. If you keep the bitcoin you should treat it as a lottery ticket.

Ah you mean you want to make the world a better place...for yourself.

In a perfect world I wouldn't really care, you can hide your money from the state if you want to. But we don't live in a perfect world. And we need to pay taxes for the services we get, even if we don't want to.
If everyone followed the law there would be no issues there. But there problem is that not everyone does follow the law, and any kind of criminal activity is very thankful for providing means for them to hide their dirty money, made from drug traffic, slavery, extortion, theft,smuggling,..these are the kind of activities you enable.

So don't kid yourself thinking you are here for the benefit of others, and that Bitcoin will make the world a better place to live in. You are here for selfish reasons, as you yourself have stated.

Oh, I was here to make money (and to learn more about Bitcoin), I don't think I have ever denied that? I did felt uncomfortable knowing that Bitcoin enabled criminals, but I don't believe it affected my decision to sell.
I was just pointing out that your intentions to have bitcoin might not be so pure as you want us (or yourself) to believe.

Woah. :)

It must've only affected your decision to buy, which is even worse.

This is why I am on the edge of leaving crypto like the op personally. Some of us have day jobs and we don't have the time or money to sit around all day buying at the dips playing day trader. I want an investment I can feel safe buying, turning off the computer and coming back 6 months later. I am still unsure if Bitcoin is this solvent and alts definitely aren't that at this moment either.

Nice signature! For someone "with a day job"  and looking for "investments were I feel safe buying" you sure have a lot of shitcoins...

I don't understand why you would assume that, but if you have to know I didn't realize it at the start.
But it brings up an interesting discussion. If we look at just the morals here, and forget about the money. Assuming that you know for sure Bitcoin is helping criminals, should you stop using it?

I think we all know what the answer is here.

The criminal angle continues to be stupid. Fiat is where most criminal activity takes place.

No way!?!?!  :o


I'm joking. Just in case it ain't obvious. Any instrument with which you can transact value will be used for criminal purposes.

Where did you ever get the idea Bitcoin was anything like a safe investment? It's a new, barely-tested payment system and public ledger all in one. It's radical in many ways and no-one knows if it's going to work in the long term, or what that would even mean. Any potential as an investment is purely incidental and profits entirely unguaranteed.

It's like you saw a unicorn and thought it would make a pretty good racehorse if you bought it. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but man! It's a unicorn!

They weren't shitcoins 3 months ago when I made my signature, but now everything is down in the dumps. Why the personal attack? If it's not the market being in the red severely it is the attitude among people around here that turns me off from crypto in general, it is very elitist.

That's because those who actually understand what bitcoin is, how it works, the technological as well as the financial side, the implications for society on the longer term and maybe even an understanding of the exponential function and network effects, are elite. Most people simply do not have the mental capacity to understand all of that at once. So when someone like the op comes along, who only takes a months long look at things and fails to take into account even the past years price history, there is a reaction. It's a toddler telling a university student why he is a fool, and being smug about it.

And they were always shitcoins. They offered nothing useful and therefore failed.

You must not have learned anything about bitcoin.

If that's the case, then I hope you didn't cash them out to fiat, because that's used for more than 99% of criminal activities.


+1

The classical response if you sell it must be because you don't understand bitcoin. Or maybe I understand better how bitcoin works then you think. After all, I already completed University. I don't think because it crashed and recovered before it will do that again automatically. It's dangerous to assume so. Maybe it will but as I said, all the facts currently point in the other direction.

I will stop posting here now because I think I made my point, I heard no valid arguments against it, and some of the people who respond seem to have lost all sense with reality. I just hope people realize in time that the rocket to the moon has run out of fuel and is starting to drop.

The issue though is I have no confidence in the people who claim to understand Bitcoin either. Shrem and Karpeles have turned out to be crooks, the BTC Foundation has been doing nothing but squabbling like children for the last few months now, I also never saw a case of more impotence when I saw all the reps trying to defend Bitcoin at the NY regulation conference a few weeks back. They casually sat there and allowed lies to be uttered in front of everyone by the establishment and did little to counter them, I know there is decorum and all but really come on.

To top it off you have exchanges like btc-e whose members constantly cry about "shitcoins" like Doge while propping up dead and equally useless coins like Feathercoin or Terracoin, the whole thing is like payola with the old established coins being kept alive because of politics and tyrannical mods like Koolio banning you for any mention of competition while he simultaneously is developing and selling ASICs to mine for all these "shit" scrypt coins. I find the incestous business relationships around here questionable, like how Litecoin is propped up as the "silver" to Bitcoin's gold while Charlie Lee's brother runs one of the biggest exchanges in the world. What better way to make a fortune than develop an alternative to Bitcoin, hype it up for a year, and then have your brother sell your own creation on his exchange? And people say a 1% premine by a dev is crooked.

It only gets worse now with this whole Operation Scamcoin thing, instead of fixing problems in your own house we got people running around here trying 51% attacks and threatening to DDOS projects they don't like, wanting to extort devs for money for the "permission" to make a coin (and where do you think this money is going, hmmmm)..

It is also kind of insulting to me that BTCtalk has been bantering around for months now about how Bitcoin is going to $100k a coin, maybe even a million dollars. This exuberant hype is what has been driving the newbies in, then the minute the Chinese sneeze everyone starts selling out leaving the newbies with the bags, yeah if you collected thousands of Bitcoins for pennies, a 50% drop in price might not be so bad when you are wealthy, but for working class schmucks who were promised a chance to escape the clutches of a debt-ridden society and rampant unemployment and who put up a good chunk of their salary to join the movement, it feels like a betrayal and only lends ammunition to the accusation BTC is a ponzi scheme. Where are all you hardcore libertarian types around to stand up to the Chicoms and tell them to screw off? You are dumping your coins and running off with fiat like scared little puppies. I thought Bitcoin users weren't supposed to care what oppressive governments think?

Finally the top 1% owning 80% of the Bitcoins doesn't speak well for decentralization, and how many of these coins are owned by immature teenagers who get their news from reddit?

Sorry but my experience so far in the last few months has been finding the whole thing to be amateur hour and a circus show.

And Satoshi needs to show himself. This "mysterious creator" bullshit is getting old, everyone attacked the creator of AUR for being equally anonymous but somehow think Satoshi gets to be immune from such criticism. I am still not even sure Bitcoin is not an NSA project. The movement needs a leader and a confidence boost and him revealing himself could do that.

So your argument is basically "Trust me - I'm a college graduate" ?

That might have worked in 1965, but these days a college graduate is a dime a dozen and carries no weight as an appeal to authority.

 :D :D :D :D  This fuckin' guy...

So don't trust, learn. Don't use exchanges you don't trust, you wouldn't be the first. Don't invest in shitcoins (that would be almost all of them). Place a bet on the price on bitbet if you are sure enough, like others have done, put your money where your mouth is. Don't invest or trade on emotion. None of that changes fundamentals, your complaint is with human nature and not with the technology itself.

On btc-e specifically, I don't use it anymore due to several red flags popping up over the past few months. Most recently, I noticed they banned the IP my VPN uses. Even if I trusted them, it would be impossible to use them safely over wifis when traveling which is a requirement for me.

nice... one pair of weak hands down more to go...

Define criminals. There are ones that doing the drug trafficking is the apparent one, how about the ones got bailed out by our tax money and still enjoying their lavish lifestyle. For all stocks, the ultimate winners are the very few in the board meeting of that company.

Bitcoin is about bring power back to the masses, you failed to see the ever growing applications on top of this protocol.

See this is exactly my problem with crypto at the moment, it feels like one big game to extort more money and more Bitcoins from the next new pool of new victims, it feels less like a "community" but everyone here is trying to outcon everybody else, obviously the alt game is more rife with it because with lower volume the price manipulation is more apparent but don't kid yourself Bitcoin and Litecoin has the same problem it just moves at a slower pace.

I know this is just the way the finance world works but if Bitcoin were more evenly distributed, such manipulations would be harder to do, but all it takes is a few big whales who are gluttonous with Bitcoin crashing the market just to get more coins, it doesn't help mass adoption at all.

I think the biggest mistake Satoshi made was not making mining for Bitcoin difficult in its early stages that it allowed a few people to hoard most of the coins for just a few dollars of electricity.

I am also interested in a definition of criminals. Fiat is very much generated by criminal organizations at this stage.

dude don't get me wrong it's trading 101, you're absolutely free to invest/sell/buy anyway you like, but don't expect someone to come and hug you for your loss... you don't get that for losing on stock trading floor right? i do get pissed off at weak hands and i'm not denying it because weak hands to me is weak hands, these breed jump ship as soon as it starts shaking and undermine bitcoin ecosystem, they never learn, they get burnt once and start whining rest of their lives instead of getting up and keep trying... we need bitcoin believers and not flaky hands that exit as soon as they smell blood on the street... it's a free market and if you feel you're being extorted it's because you allow yourself to be... by now everyone should be aware that bitcoin is under attack by manipulators and everything else is either pure fud or temporary shift in the way things are going to be... but fundamentally it's still the same... so either you take advantage of it and make that work against them or you walk away... i'll welcome anyone to my community who has balls big enough to withstand all this fud and finally realize in long term benefits of bitcoin...

I'm not asking for anyone to hug me, if anything i've been punished for NOT having weak hands, have lost a few BTC holding onto crappy alts that just sank deeper and deeper and I held strong and didn't sell out and got burned in the end. All i'm saying is whales should think of the ramifications of what they are doing, is it worth harming the future of Bitcoin just to make a few extra coins, that's all. Playing the dips for 1-2% gains is one thing, but conspiring with other whales to tank the market as much as 50-60% and scoop up all the coins from the weak hands doesn't do anyone good in the long run. This extreme volatility only hurts mass adoption, doesn't help it.

I still don't understand why you would get out completely.

Buy back in today and congratulate yourself for your short trade.   Put the BTC in a wallet, and start looking for fun things to buy with them.


The key is to consider all the money you sink into BTC an immediate loss.  Then, any value you find in it is bonus money.

That is literally the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Sorry.

Your are not alone.

Despair.

Yet another sign we are close to the bottom of this bubble collapse cycle. A sad fact of the Bitcoin Economy's trajectory to completely replace the existing financial infrastructure is the repeated bubble phenomenon. 10x more new investors enter during the mania phase of the bubble. How many can withstand a drop of 75% from peak to trough?

Back in the summer of 2011, it was the worst. We saw prices go from 32 to 3 in successive painful capitulations. I expect that future bubble collapses will not be as painful as the past, when US retirement funds, pension funds, and other long-term wealth get allocated to future Bitcoin exchange traded funds.

As for me, I will be making another visit to my local Robocoin ATM, happily stuffing some fiat bills into it for what I think is bargain priced coin.

BTC is up today, by tomorrow we could have a confirmed Rally!


I would like to be alone now, bye.  :)

You lost me at "Why I..."

Ever notice every online forum, regardless of topic, is stricken with these hopelessly narcissistic "Why I..." posts about the poster having some revelation about how the subject at hand is bullshit and the other forum users are all fools? It's like the format just forces a certain personality type to want to make these kinds of declarations.

I'm personally curious how the stock market is working out for the OP.  I assume you then took the funds you had in Crypto and invested in the stock market and made a fortune?

Its good that weak hands slowly get filtered out.   Less volatility, and strong hands "stash" becomes worth that much more.

-B-