Bitcoin Forum

BTC is currently scraping the bottom of the trend (see graph produced by SlipperySlope):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArD8rjI3DD1WdFIzNDFMeEhVSzhwcEVXZDVzdVpGU2c#gid=7
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=366214.0

mining difficulty and network speed increased ≥20 fold since December and keeps growing at the current growth rate of ~20% every 10-11 days.
http://bitcoindifficulty.com/
....but mining efficiency increased only 2-3-fold (in GH/w), jeopardizing mining revenue and, as such, future network growth or at the least, network decentralization.

BTC price, meanwhile, is at the same levels as early November (early bubble).
We will see how it will turns out, but I am speculating that we are about to trend significantly higher (within the next 14-30 days).

Either that or a catastrophic plunge into the abyss. I'm personally buying bitcoins like crazy at the moment and probably more than good is. In any case, this summer ought to be interesting indeed  :)

What would be the reason for bitcoin to plunge into the abyss? It survived Silk Road and gox, surely it won't collapse for no reason.

The point is that the price will soon have to go up in order for mining to be profitable, if mining ends up being a bad business for a relatively long period of time it could trigger a snowball effect on the price.

when the block reward halves, won't that essentially FORCE the price up?

It SHOULD but it isn't a rule at all...btw when is the next halving?

Also, let me clarify. I don't think bitcoin will die or go to zero, that is simply not possible because some would always use and mine it for fun and not profit, but a really depressing and dark year is not unthinkable. But in the long run I'm a huge bull  :)

We all hope that that year was the year of mtgox, don't we? But yeah anything could still happen.

Let's hope so.

This is basically my not very likely short/medium term nightmare scenario:

- Mining stays unprofitable for such a long time that miners who depend on a profit to run their business will have to turn off their equipment, leaving only hobby miners and a huge drop in hashing power as a result.
- The miners who now have to stop mining will dump all the bitcoins they were holding in hopes of a short term rise in price that just never happened.
- The dumping and massive loss of hashing power all in a time when a new ATH was expected will scare the bejeebers out of many people further fueling the snowball effect.
- With all the miners leaving the stage a totally new mining landscape will form, and a new more serious 51% situation is not unthinkable - again weakening peoples trust in bitcoin.
- All the merchants who today accept bitcoin are already complaining that they have no or very few costumers who pay with bitcoin, if only hobby bitcoiners stay the merchants might lose all interest in bitcoin and stop accepting it.

But bitcoin will not die of course.

It looks to me like the 7 week moving average is holding... We're gonna break through the 30 week moving average on strong volume after the auction.

Just my 2 bits

But there will be theoreticaly less demand as really big volume will be bought off goverment and not off the exchanges to boost the price.

Unless the actions winners are new to the game and will restore confidence in those already buying from the exchanges.

I believe that will happen... we'll see.  I believe that some of the coins will be sold above market price... and the price will be published.  This will put a floor under the market, and cause confidence in buying here.  I placed a bet on betmoose.com under username Zohann... my money is where my mouth is.

Additionally.. I believe there's a ton of fiat moving to be ready to pounce after the auction... some of mine included. Time will tell... its gonna be fun to watch.

Fun indeed, I'm stocking up on popcorn as well as coins :D

AFTER? You don't know how Wall Street operates. They will pop the price 20-30% afterwards and you will be caught chasing it. Have you seen any decent IPO?

Reward-Drop ETA: 2016-08-13 14:41:26 UTC (111 weeks, 5 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes)

(from bitcoinclock.com)

Turning illiquid investments into fiat and funding an account takes time.  My account should be funded by tomorrow morning ... I hope! 

Interesting defintion of "plunge". It dropped $50 in a week. The week before that it gained $100.

Since a year ago we're up some 500%. If that's pluging into the abyss, I would be very interested in what other investments you keep?

The top reason to drop right now would be traders selling out on a break of trend. There are a lot traders just front running the next 'scheduled 9 month bubble' which might not happen.

A much simpler explanation is that hedge funds or other funds that are interested in buying into the auction are employing traders to push the price down so they could bid lower.
They do it all the time on a regular stock market (push down before buying en masse). That was described brilliantly by Jesse Livermore, who was always testing the downside of the market before buying a larger block. Read "Reminiscences of a stock operator"-a classic.

i think we very well may not get that "scheduled" bubble. but if not, i still expect a big fakeout from all the traders waiting to panic buy back in. then maybe reverse at somewhere in the 700-800 area....

I can't see the miner's profitability effecting the price other than maybe some miners may consider buying coins instead of hardware.  There are a lot of Bitcoin users who have never even owned a miner.

Interesting...the analogy would be that you think that the price of gold is unaffected by how much it costs to mine it?

Edit: As was proposed by Y. Guo (per my recollection), every bitcoin owner should also mine. This way, you have a vote on Bitcoin value, etc. If you don't mine-you relinquish this responsibility to someone else who takes it.

As of right now, for every 100BTC owned, you need to mine with 590GH only (almost exactly three antminers S1), everything more is an excess.
calculation: (0.59TH/125000TH)X21000000btc=~100 BTC or ~1Th for each 150 BTC owned. These are, of course, minimal numbers that will increase as speed will be increasing.

The price won't rise again until people know what is happening with the 30k btc auction. Will the auction winner turn around and dump the coins at an exchange? That seems to be the current fear.

Bad days for Bitcoin = Good profitable investments for us, it's about time for a rally that will start at the beggining of July, just get ready for it, do not miss it please...

There are some great quotes in that book. I'm gonna have to add it to my reading pile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscences_of_a_Stock_Operator

Here are a couple of my favorites:

"Old man Partridge's insistence on the vital importance of being continuously bullish in a bull market doubtless made my mind dwell on the need above all other things of determining the kind of market a man is trading in. I began to realize that the big money must necessarily be in the big swing. Whatever might seem to give a big swing, initial impulse, the fact is that its continuance is not the result of manipulation by pools or artifice by financiers, but depends upon basic conditions. And no matter who opposes it, the swing must inevitably run as far and as fast and as long as the impelling forces determine."

"I should say that a chart helps those who can read it or rather who can assimilate what they read. The average chart reader, however, is apt to become obsessed with the notion that the dips and peaks and primary and secondary movements are all there is to stock speculation. If he pushes his confidence to its logical limit he is bound to go broke."