Bitcoin Forum

Dunno about anyone else but thats where I am!

For me its characterised by all the fear of price drop having gone, and an increasing sense of apathy. I log into BTC and can barely be bother to click any threads any more.

Everyone's seen the chart obviously...

http://optionalpha.com/the-14-stages-of-investor-emotions-and-trading-psychology-10433.html

I think this one is also a good match, in that stage 13 looks really familiar!

https://i.imgur.com/eVpYdfxl.gif

That chart works for markets with good fundamentals, not for bubbles for which demand is gone and keeps decreasing.


You seem to keep taking for granted that BTC will go in a strong bull market again. That's an assumption that might be totally wrong.

An assumption that might be totally wrong


Holy shit buy, buy, buy a permbear troll lost faith btc will go to 0 ahhhhhh!!!!!!!

There is still no reason to buy Bitcoin other than to trade or buy drugs.

In other words:  Told you so. 
See # 14

Maybe if you go outside the speculation sub you might be get a clue  :)

I do, and what I see is pretty bad  :)

Exactly. It's an assumption, not better or worse than the opposite one.

And that's also how you distinguish posts (and users) that are worth reading from those that are not, bulls and bears alike:

"No way Bitcoin could possibly fail. Only chance for that to happen would be Space Lizard manipulation. 10k USD per coin early next year, for sure!"

and

"Get out while you can! The bubble has finally popped for good. No chance it'll recover from this. The network and its currency is worthless!"

are equally worthless.

The only difference between bull trolls and bear trolls: among the latter there's a much larger share of newly registered accounts. Could be because of the ongoing bear market (and because the very earliest investors aren't bearish enough yet), but could also be because the bear trolls don't stick around once the market recovers.

Bear trolls have throwaway bull troll accounts also, which they are happy to log into during a rally and post stupid "To da moon!" posts and pics of rockets and trains.  Because they are day traders, and all they care about is people buying during a rally (so they can eventually take profit).


The true bull long investors on this board are probably still reading occasionally, but don't bother to even post right now and haven't for nearly a year.  Their posts and threads would just get lost in all this troll dribble.


This whole sub forum is a complete farce.  With the exception of a few posters, I don't believe that most of the people posting here are honest.

Bite your tongue!  This forum is about money, and everyone knows that money brings out only the best in man >:(

Beg to disagree. We're in the most brutal bear market bitcoin has seen so far (2011 was more drastic in price change alone, but measure by price change and duration, 2014 to now is much worse I'd say).

What else could this forum look like in a state like that?

If you re-visit threads from the first half of 2014, you'll see the old bullish regulars declaring with full conviction that the bottom *must* be in now. Plenty of posts with the usual log-linear extrapolations to 1000s of $ per coin were posted again.

The failed May/July reversal really changed that optimistic outlook. Until the next, even bigger capitulation in October. Then the reversal after that one failed as well. New capitulation, January, even lower price, even higher volume. And it's not at all clear to me where we're heading right now.

My point is, in a deep bear market like this, what do you expect the long-term Bitcoin believers to post? Predictions about impending reversals? Done that, and failed. Pat each other on the back for not being affected yet because their entry price was in the single digits? That happens occasionally, and it provokes a justified backlash.

So the bears, on the market and in the subforum are running the show for now. I agree that probably quite a few of them are disingenuous, in the sense that they're not really here to "warn the delusional bulls" about the price decline. But whatever the reasons are for them to post here, they use the same hyperbole the bulls rely on when the market is up.

That's where I see the similarity: if you can't acknowledge bitcoin might fail after all, it's not much better in my view than if you can't acknowledge it might succeed (and price will recover). Everything between those two extremes is a valid opinion, and I like reading it usually.

That is not true.  I haven't had a credit card in 12 years, use Bitcoin all the time for flights and hotels.  In fact I'm going to SEA for a couple months and everything has been booked with BTC.

I've been sitting tight hodling since October 2012.

I remember feeling quite well off November 2013 time, but yep, the rollercoaster's been playing a bit rough since; I still think it beats putting the money in the bank or stock market though.

I've found it's helped moving somewhere sunny and living off the proceeds of the house while bitcoin makes its mind up.

Again, I don't think most of those so-called "bulls" were genuine at all, only a small percentage were real bull long investors that truly care about bitcoin's future.  Most of those older bull accounts just belong to disingenuous day traders flipping the script during a rally to "To da moon!", how bitcoin will change the world, bogus charts, rockets/trains, sky high predictions, and other such nonsense because it serves their purpose at the moment.  

And declarations of "The bottom MUST be in!" is just bull trap fodder spread by day traders trying to unload more coins.

Once the rally is over, they eventually log out of those bull accounts, and back into their bear troll accounts and go to town.  Starting the bullshit cycle all over again.  

If you are a newbie that comes here in the middle of a rally, then the joke is on you.  You already missed the train for a long while.

The good news for true longs is, now during the "Despondancy Stage" is probably a very good time to buy.

Thanks for shedding some realism on the situation. Most people here have never been interested in Bitcoin or its applications: that simply is a myth. Before I said that 80 or maybe 90% of the people posting here are only in it for the money, and not for the tech, and I'm gonna stick with that. There's an active movement, and that includes you too SgtBett, that actively makes people dream of wealth and grandeur in the future. People only lose when they sell according to their philosophy, while the best thing to do throughout 2014, save during some short lived bumps upwards, was to instantly sell all your Bitcoins.

I know the comparison is highly unpopular here, but I still believe that Bitcoin has a lot in common with a ponzi scheme. There is tremendous peer pressure to stay into the 'game', if only to fill the pockets of people that were here before. I almost on a daily basis see people advising new members, that mostly have no clue about Bitcoin or where the price is headed, to buy as much as they can and 'hold'. It really is sickening to see sometimes.

Why are you even here? Stop wasting your time and leave.

This again: this instant agressiveness against anything that goes against the status quo here. If you rather not read it, press the 'ignore' button as quite a few people tend to do here. A sign of utter intellectual weakness (as it boils down to plugging your eyes and saying 'lalalalala can't hear you!'), but go ahead if that makes you feel better.

The reason why I'm here is simply because I still tend to read these boards now and then. I find it highly interesting how Bitcoin is developing and how it goes down, despite the vast euphoria that I witnessed here. Not to laugh at the people that really lost a lot of money - as I honestly feel for them - but more as a social experiment. Cultism is what will hurt a lot of people that read these boards.

People are well aware of the volatility and most people here are putting only recreational money then trolling each others depending on their positions. What's wrong about that? I think you are way too much concerned.

Wow sounds like 2 differentdifferent people.

Indeed, but I found it important to warn that guy in the strongest wordings possible. He had clearly no idea of what he was even doing here, yet he fell for Bitcoin probably because he had some ideas about getting rich quickly. Why some people still don't get it is beyond me, but then again the average Joe, of which this guy seems to be a good example, doesn't know shit. I think you agree with me that Bitcoin is no place for inexperienced people at this point.

You are describing a phenomenon (the "trolls" that switch the music from bull to bear) that is simply a natural consequence of another phenomenon.
What phenomenon you ask?

The way this market works. The way uptrends and downtrends in the bitcoin market work.

Just go look at the all time chart. Does it look like a natural or healthy market? There are hardly any healthy sustainable uptrends and grow in there, just periods of ridiculous bubbles that don't last that long followed by LONG periods of dumps into the ground (that in previous bubble cycles stopped always higher, but that is irrelevant).
Look at the 2011 chart. The "$32 to $2" one. Sure, it eventually recovered and went into other bubbles after, but does it look like a healthy market to you? No, the majority of people responsible for those price increases (and consequent dumps) don't seem to care about using bitcoin or how many bitcoin they have, they care about how many dollars they are gonna get when they dump higher (or how many dollars they get when they close their shorts).

Do the words and expression "bubble" or "pump&dump" ring any bells here?

Daytraders, speculators ot trolls are not the problem, because these unnatural unhealthy price movements (exponential pumps or prolonged panics and relentless dumps) are an indication that bitcoin is not a payment system, but can only be a musical chairs "let's make a quick dollar" instrument. It doesn't have a real use (not for the majority of people involved in bitcoin for whatever reason) that would justify a high price aside from the speculative aspect of it as an end in itself.


A speculative bubble based on blind hype and kool aid works like this: As long as the pumps are possible because of a low enough price and marketcap everyone stays in the game, but when unsustainable long term "demand/supply inbalance" price range is reached (and that could have been the $500-$1000 range for BTC) shit hits the fan, THE bubble actually bursts and everybody starts to lose interest (demand goes to shit and price slowly and gradually decreases and doesn't recover anymore).


The only significant number of people (percentage) actually using bitcoin as payment system because of its only advantages to fiat money are drug dealers. And sometimes they get totally screwed by it anyway: http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-crash-drug-dealers-2015-1?r=US


Think about all that for a moment.

I can understand your feelings on this.  But you must realize that if no one, I mean NO one held bitcoin at all, the price would drop to zero or near zero.  That includes the traders on the exchanges.  So holding HAS to be part of the equation, just like in PMs, stocks, commodities, etc.  This idea that no one should ever hold bitcoin is ridiculous, as then bitcoin would then have no market value at all.  More people holding and deciding what they WON'T sell it for fiat (or never back to fiat) is what gives bitcoin it's market price in the first place.

I don't usually respond to troll accounts, but I will this one time.  The rises might be from traders who don't really care about bitcoin, but the majority of Average Joe retail buyers would LOVE and envision a future world where the bitcoin they bought not only continues to rise in value relative to fiat currency, but they can also exchange it DIRECTLY for everything in life (goods, services, rent, utilities, gas, food, car, travel, etc.)  THAT is what the Average Joe wants bitcoin for, they don't really want to just exchange it back for more fiat currency.  That defeats the whole purpose in their eyes.

Oh please. lol
Sure, the r/bitcoin users who scream "to the moon" during pumps but argue that price doesn't matter during dumps actually care about paying for something online with their coins.


It's not like the most popular philosophy here and on reddit is that you should HODL your coins and don't spend them (AKA dump them, since merchants don't want no bitcoinz) and that bitcoin is a great gold 2.0 store of value  ::) ::) ::)

you forget the trading joe ;) here because they think that bitcoin has better chances to give them wealth than playing the lottery, but still trading to increase their stash

Your opinion isn't just "unpopular". It is pretty unsubstantiated. Which partially explains the aggressiveness you complain about.

Numbers like "80 or 90% don't care about Bitcoin" are pulled straight out of your ass. And are basically accusing anyone who is pro Bitcoin of being a shill or fraud.


And the comparison with a ponzi is as old as this forum. Yes, we understand: those who bought in at single digits are still enjoying happy profits, while those who bought in in late 2013 are sitting on a big loss, USD wise.

But that's where the similarity to a Ponzi or pyramid scheme ends. A Ponzi is by /definition/ unsustainable. Bitcoin has a number of usage cases, or at least so do some investors and speculators think. Depending on the exact usage case it'll settle on, total valuation could be much lower than now (that'd be the "failure" case, I guess), or it could be vastly higher.

So you have to excuse the older members who've heard it all, 3 or 4 times already, each time the market corrected down. Bitcoin might (I stand by that) still fail to gain mass adoption over time. But the arguments brought forward by the "critics", such as that there's a consolidated effort to brainwash everyone into buying more is pretty much bullshit. Doesn't mean the uber bulls are right, but it's a lot more likely they do drink their own kool aid - looking at the registration dates of those accounts, unless they were total idiots in 2011 and 2012, they benefited way too much from the market not to feel pretty good about. Genuinely good, not "let's trick the newcomers into buying this fad" good.

You're the worst kind of troll, because if people actually bought into your stupid "bitcoin is worthless" argument then they would sell everything, never buy again, it would collapse to zero, and you would be out of the bitcoin day trading business for good.  

Be careful what you wish for, troll.   ::)

So?

Well seeing that you're on this sub 24/7 now and are compelled to post 1000 times per day, it looks like you desparately need bitcoin to survive.  Which is ironic because you say its worthless.

Ok I'm done with you. Back to /Ignore you go.

Well, you'd better stay off Wall Street, never run for political office, never work for a large company, or god forbid work in the entertainment industry. Because everyone in every one of those establishments will knock your game piece off of the board in an instant, given the chance.

You call it a cult. The whole human race is a cult then: A cult to better ourselves at the expense of others. It's called natural selection.

Sorry to say but the world today is not such a rosy place once you're out of the nest. In my view we attract so many unskilled investors because they see it as a chance to dig their way out of a shitty life position. They don't have access to traditional investment vehicles like many of us in the US and EU but (thanks to technology) they happen to have a computer and are technically literate. To them Bitcoin is a way out, a way to financial freedom to whatever degree they'd like to use it. It is an opportunity for many who are stuck under the thumb of corrupt governments siphoning off their country's resources and fruits of its citizens' labor. Obviously a change like this would not happen overnight, and not necessarily with Bitcoin. Large price swings may scare some people, but looking at the bigger picture it is a blip. And there will be more price swings, more volatility, and more resistance by centralized powers. Strap in or get off the bus.

Here's another version of the chart. See where it says "point of maximum financial risk/opportunity"? It think it is relevant.

https://i.imgur.com/YZpyjTT.png

There are some genuine bears too which truely belive bitcoin is shit and a good first try at best.

Not everyone posting here does so for the purpose of manipulation.


on topic:

Stages of the market apply not here because we just witnessed a multi-year epic bubble pop. Possibly the biggest bubble since the famous tulipmania. Prices will go to  doubledigits most likely - to the real value.

If you are reading a old member here that posts frequently, it's more probable that it is a permabull rather than a an old bull turned permabear, since the latter has probably moved on and he is now interested in other things or projects.

Some early adopters simply "get it" and have moved on. You probably won't read a post everyday here from them.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=496365.0

the problem with valueation of btc is especially critical in this part of the forum.

every person spending a day researching bitcoin and its potential understands that it has fundamentals - it will just in one case be worthless, and that is the very unlikely case that it is dethroned as the cryptocurrency #1.
spending the second day using and grasping the concept, you will very likely understand that we are far away from mass adoption. - gavin put it the best way: he said it is an experiment and he will not tell the general public to use or to buy it at this point of time. this might change, but I think for the time being it is an experiment for geeks speculators and people trying to innovate the financial industry.

Good call OP. I actually think we going for another dip down the 100's, then the recapitulation showing Bitcoin resilence by begin. By 2016 we should see a couple suicides happening by twice-boat-missers.

Early adopters are actually sitting pretty tight on their stash

http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top100

A perfect scenario for this to unfold would be for price to slightly overshoot the previous bottom (I assume that it was $152 or about), say to 151.99 or $149.99.
Something similar happened in 2011 when everybody were horrified that BTC breached $2 and thought that it will retest at least $1.
In fact, however, it only breached $2 to $1.98 or so, then went to $1150.
My prediction would be that if this was, indeed, the bottom, we might revisit it with a slight intraday overshot to $149.99-151.99.

You mean a part of them (that for all you know is a small fraction of all early adopters, and probably is) are losing huge quantities of money every month?
Sure, I know.

Or perhaps just when everyone is convinced that bitcoin will make a new low or revisit a previous low, it just starts slowly creeping up.  Slowly, inch by inch.  Catching all the bears by surprise.  Just like it did before.

Whale traders determine where the absolute bottom will be.  Not Average Joe.

yes, of course, there is no investment law that lows have to be revisited.

The price is creeping down, not up.  And it's not really creeping, it's going at a healthy clip :-\

http://s8.postimg.org/at6ohigdh/Capture.jpg

@bassclef re. 'See where it says "point of maximum financial risk/opportunity"?':
See where it says "Temporary setback, I'm a long-term investor"?  Yeah, you.

Any thoughts about what price will be at #14 ?
:)

sgbett still hasn't sorted out the cognitive dissonance.

How is loosing money doing for ya sgbett? Never had any regrets to not shortsell some for 800$ or 600$ ? Still think it's gonna be 1000$ soon?

Some beartard still think it will get any lower?

sure - always more down
On 80$ i will still vote down ... because i can do math

Show us your math  :)

Interesting historical fact:  Some fool, much like you, was saying the same thing to me when I bought at $8 and it slumped down to $4.  

What a fool I was.

 ::)

I tend not to ignore people that have views contrary to my own as long as they have something of value to add to a debate.  Luckily for me, you seem to be void of the ability to contribute.

All the things about how unsustainable the coin is have been said in numerous threads. I don't need to repeat it for the last retarded sad individuals because my time is more valuable than that.

Oh you just found some of your valuable time to write such an insightful comment? Thank you good sir!

I'm still waiting for your math though...

"My time is more valuable than the $0 I get paid to troll BCT"

Pretty much sums up his math abilities.

your network at these prices costs 5700 USD every 10 minutes
at 1000$ it would cost 25000$ in 10 minutes, or 3.6 million in a day ... 1.3 billion in a year.
Who's going to pay that? Nobody, that's who.

There isn't more that needs to be said

Me.  ;)

Until you're broke and then it goes to zero after that.

May god have mercy on you degenerates while i'll get rich with efficient alternatives.

Thanks for the analysis.

OP I have to say I find your posts highly refreshing. I think it is worth pointing out that the 'float' of coins moving the price up and down is tiny compared to the vast majority of coins which are 'held' by people like you and me who actually believe in the technology. We are what give the commodity value.

Whilst there may be one or two honest bears on here who believe that bitcoin is destined to fail, almost everyone else without exception is simply trying to buy back in at a lower price or actively shorting the commodity, whilst dishonestly talking it down for manipulative purposes. Nothatinjustrollin is a fine example. Lets be honest none of us would want to meet up with any of you in real life.

Its very simple.  The price is depressed by 3600 new coins per day.  And no it doesn't matter that exchanges are doing tens of thousands of trades per day -- most are likely the same coins passed between the same traders.  It doesn't matter that miners often hold.  If they weren't holding mined coins they would have been buyers.

Creating the next wave will be actual use or fear-driven diversification.

By actual use I don't mean another exchange.  I mean remittance, changetip, to a lesser degree credit card replacement (since the benefits are minimal, esp if you don't already hold BTC), and most importantly new uses.

Diversification is not happening much now because most people are momentum buyers and central banks are mostly keeping a lid on things.  So there is less reason to diversify out of fiat currencies, and BTC is not perceived as such a great choice even if you wanted to.
 
This could change if we have a few months stability or a gradual rise.  But again, this will be hard at 3600 coin inflation per day.

I'd like to meet you in real life... to smack you upside the back of your head for lending your coins out on Finex  ;)

I kid  :D

Another historical fact:  I was told to buy @$1,200 but, like a fool, I resisted.  

Do you have any proof for these accusations?

Currently I'm not even trading. But sure I've shorted in the past among other trades. I was expecting the price to crash and it did, what was I supposed to do go long or buy or hold and lose money? And if I ever talked about buying here in this forum (pretty sure I never did tho) was just as a trade not because I wanted "cheap coins". Nothing that is in contradiction with my general medium-long term bearish outlook for BTC.

"Manipulative purposes"? Do you really think that my posts can influence the price of what is currently a multibillion (maybe not for long tho) market? Are you serious??
I just post my opinions in here and the majority of time they are backed by concrete arguments.

The mining inflation is, IMO, only a small fraction of the "reason" for the continued down trend.  I think the run up to $1,000 brought a lot of people in who have no interest in BTC outside of speculation to increase fiat holdings.  I would also attribute some of that rise and fall to the mining scene.  The advent of ASICS brought a lot of money into the BTC economy as a lot of mining HW could only be purchased via BTC.  The decline in mining HW demand also attributes to a decreasing in demand for BTC (no need to acquire if not purchasing HW).


OLD miners held, newer miners are looking for a payday.  Example of a corpo: KnC.  Example of a miner: xstr8guy.  I don't believe that miners looking for a pay day would have been speculative buyers.

What has happened between then and now is a shift in the people involved in BTC.  It's moved far away from the ideals and beliefs of the initial user base to groups of people looking to abuse it for monetary gain.  Obviously there are still new comers interested in the tech, but I would guess a majority are looking for a way to bank $$$, not BTC.

It is a combination of these fundamental shifts, the proliferation of exchanges offering margin trading (and yes, BTC inflation) that are the key motivators for what we are seeing now.

I hope you're not suggesting that a portion of Bitcoin's userbase is motivated by  ...greed?  Unthinkable!
Is there no limit to human depravity, using Bitcoin as if it was real money?!  For monetary gain even?!!1!

So we are in the good ol' "people buying and HODLING expecting 1 gazillion per coin thanks to greater fools are saints and are in for the ideals but the people dumping or shorting because they expect the price to go down are evil and greedy".
I see...

The "to the moon" mentality has been around for a long time...

You weren't here then so I don't expect you to understand that that's not what I mean. 

It's easy to walk around with your shit brush and paint it all brown, and to be honest that's exactly what I expect from you.  Just to share: it wasn't just "people buying and HODLING expecting 1 gazillion per coin", in fact the early "pioneers" if we can call them that spread their BTC wealth quite willingly.  There were BTC bounties offered for development and technical assistance.  There were faucets that gave multiple coins away.  People mined at a financial loss and were more than happy to do so.  There were countless other things going on that were all reflective of people sharing, building, and growing BTC because of the ideas behind it at the time. 

But I digress.  You weren't there, you didn't witness it, and thusly I don't expect you to be cognizant just how much this "community" has changed.

^Yep, when BTC was worthless, it was passed around freely, like shitcoins of today.
Now that it's actually worth something, the same BTC "Pioneers" suddenly tightened their purse strings :-\  Err...  I mean far as passing the coin around--they still brag about their mad wealth & teh Lambos bought.

P.S:  I've been around this community for quite a while, and it was *ALWAYS* full of scumbags, second-rate hustlers & first-rate suckers.

Oh I see you are talking about the REALLY old days. People became greedy with the first 2011 bubble or even before, as soon as some understood that this thing could be pumped&dumped.
Sure I know that Gavin donated 10k BTC to a faucet, that early miners had no idea what these funny tokens could become, sure I know.

But when blind greed is involved, things can shift quite quickly. And they did.

PS: How do you know where I was during BTC early days?

Ha :)

Yes, it was a phase. Eventually fear of exchange failure got the better of me. :)

Fuck yes. Finally a post worth reading again in all this troll garbage. (Yours is worth reading as well, OP, but you know that.)

There's momentum overshoot, to the up and downside, just like in any market. Then there's the Bitcoin typical iliquidity of the very market that determines "the price", mainly because of two reasons: hoarding, and the unusually high counterparty risk with our existing exchanges. Then there's quite a bit of an effect of savvy traders' driving the market in this direction or that (within certain limits). And then there's whatever adoption as a medium of exchange adds a certain minimum valuation through usage.

But at the end, it's mostly about the inflation. ("Boooh. Don't call it that! Bitcoin is sound money!") Whatever price emerges at the end of the day, after all the above factors are included, times 3600 has to be put up by someone. (Actually, quite a bit more than 3600 lately because of the lagging difficulty adjustment. Closer to 4100 per day last year.)

So, we wait for 2017.

Or maybe not. As the wise oracle user who's been absent for a long time now pointed out, there's an interesting dynamic about how the market prices in the decline in the growth of the monetary base. Some anticipation effect of the reward reduction is likely to click at some point with a continued decline in price (which is itself reducing the effect of the 3600 coins per day, all else equal), most likely generating a rather sharp effect on price.

I consider 2017 a hard limit for our bear market, but probably the 'click' will take place before.

honestly, i really don't get why people are focusing on 3600 number so much. Yes, someone has to buy these coins, but it is a puny number (The equivalent of $828K). Are you saying that 828K selling is depressing the bitcoin price? If so, bitcoin is punier than I thought. In addition, a measly $2K investment by 360 people on earth populated by 7 billion will devour these few coins.

I think that much stronger flows are probably initial (early) BTC wallets selling. These can really provide a downside.

It's either a lot or a little, but it's still 12%.  12% of total coins in existence had to be bought up in 2014 to keep the price steady.

No, not 'selling', like what happens on the exchanges. The actual need to find ~1 million USD per day in fresh capital. Or, you know, closer to 2 million the months before. Or almost 4 million even earlier.

We had an inflation of almost 13% last year. How would this not have an effect on price, when taking place together with a correction turning into a full blown bear market?

Here's the simple argument why it has to be that way. If there were upwards of 1 million USD per day fresh capital coming in each day, the only reason we could still be declining in price would be if all the exchanges would be running some gigantic manipulation game to keep price down (fractional reserve plus shorting could do that, perhaps). I consider that a lot less likely than the absence of a million dollar coming in per day.

EDIT: Sloppy reading on my side. Your argument is that old coins cashing out add to the effect. I doubt that, days destroyed and large very old wallets being untouched aren't supporting that idea, afaik.

Yep supply keeps steadily increasing as miners print money are awarded for all the electricity they're wasting hard work.


But you wanna know something even more amazing? The amount of fiat sitting on exchanges has been consistently, steadily and relentlessly decreasing for more than a year, and it's not getting better.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=934650.msg10248181#msg10248181

How do you like that?
Go figure that shit out.



Price goes down? Gotta be them savvy daytraders screwing with our investment Goddamnit!

correct, but the $$ numbers are tiny right now, 2014 is long gone (it was more like $3-4 mil a year ago). If the number of users is increasing, such small flows are not a problem. My point is that it was most likely not these tiny flows, but rather much larger flows form earlier adopters.
EDIT: I see that OP provided an argument that this is not the case.
I make no bullish or bearish argument here.

In my opinion, sometimes markets represent just some random walk on trend and, as we know, the longer any trend continues, the more likely it will continue in the immediate future (this is true).
Witness priceline decrease to $6 (split adjusted) from $900 in 1999-2000 and then back to above $1000, or Akamai from $300 to below $1, back to $58. Yeah, i can rationalize this ad hoc, but could you predict $1 when it was at $300 and $60 when it was $1-probably not. If I could, i would have been probably close to a billionaire right now.

If someone suggested that the sharp decline in bitcoin price has made its future more uncertain, I would probably agree with this argument.

I'm considering possibilities, not posting forgone conclusions.

I observed a change in my sentiment, I questioned why, I remembered something I read about that. I dug it out and posted it as a take on what it could be.

What I noticed was that instead of reading the OP  and considering it on its own merits, a small cohort of people immediately jumped in and posted exactly the same things they posted on every other thread all day long.

Can you explain why I am suddenly no longer worried about it going lower, even though now it feels more hopeless than ever. Before on every run up I was hoping that "this was the end" stages 6-10, but inside I think I knew that we had a long way to go and that it probably wasnt. Every 'calling the bottom' thread was just a manifestation of hope, pleading for it to be so.

Every big selloff, I hoped that was the captulation that had to happen, but again I kind of knew that it wasn't convincing enough.

Now things have changed. The move on the 15th look like it could actually be a capitulation bottom. Since then the general flavour of price action looks to have changed. Firstly the mini-run up. We haven't seen anything like that for a while. The sell of afterwards looks to me like profit taking and not continued downward momentum. Volume trailing off again. In the past its looked different, half hearted upward moves, with consistently petering volume. Selloffs follow, trend resumes.

Now I don't expect bears to change there tune at any time. To stay true to form they have to go through the painful steps 14-17.

It feels like I've done my time, and so now I hand the uncertainty and indecision over to the bears. Whilst I patiently wait for what will come next.

Bitocin isn't broken, the market price at any given point during its adoption is only of interest to traders:


I agree with 'Trollin. the pumps and dumps are speculative. I agree with Torque. Some people aren't traders. Both can be true, just because speculators speculate on the price of something it doesn't preclude the possibility that the thing itself might actually have some value.

I am definitely one of the 'morpheus meme' types. I don't buy BTC to flip for profit. I bought because I believed in it, I still do. All I have to do is manage myself and my emotions and stay calm whilst the rest of the market gyrates. Such gyration is understandable *if* this is actually the new paradigm that it could possibly be.

For those who insist on reading my posts as recommendations to buy, I'm at a loss. I've made it clear countless times that what I post on speculation is just an idea, not a guarantee. I think out loud, I am not afraid to be wrong, and I take actions based on the premise that I probably will be such that if I am I don't lose.

So if anyone wants to make that wrong assumption about what I have done, and then extrapolate that into "how you feel making all them loose" then I can only feel embarrassed for how badly you've misjudged the situation.

As Oda says posting about how my buy in price is single digits will only get backlash, I wouldn't do that. I couldn't anyway, as its now negative $xxx! ;) So please enough with the "losses" posts. Not being *able* to lose is the only thing that allows me to maintain an objective view on whether I should sell.

I shouldn't. Neither should anyone else that only invested what the could afford to lose and correctly said goodbye to every cent they swapped for magic BTCeans right at the start. If it goes to zero I have no sympathy for you, even if you disregard all the premiers as being trollposts (I don't they have there opinions, I have mine) then you should have paid attention to one of the biggest permbulls that has said on many occasions it could go to zero. Caveat Emptor.

Also, don't trade, especially not emotionally. See figure 1.

NB: I break this rule occasionally to sell on the way up, and buy on the way down. Formulaically, without jeopardising the principal BTC sum (and always later regretting the buys that came too early, but never regretting the sells made near the top).

I can very easily imagine a failure scenario and know exactly what where that leaves me. Can any of you permabears actually imagine a 'worldwide adoption' scenario and how that might unfold? and, what effect that would have on you? Would you ever capitulate buy, at which point would you turn your amateur hour psychology tools on yourself and realise that the dissonance was in the mirror all along? Whats your plan for coping with the trauma of missed opportunity, because that could be almost suicide inducing in some - given the temper tantrums y'all have when anyone dares to post suggesting that "price might go up"!

You know uber bears, either could happen. You don't have any idea which it will be, neither do I. Confirmation bias will be your undoing. Things happening that point to less *speculative* price action are all well and good. What does it say about the actual adoption of the technology. Can that continue without fundamental growth in value, that won't necessarily manifest itself as a result of a run up on bitstamp, but perhaps once BTC can be used in the form of a currency collapse whereby the dollar price starts to shoot up but the BTC price stays the same. Such that exchanges are pulled along by real world value and not the other way round like it is at the moment.

THIS exactly describes my feelings, too. I feel so understood. Thanks, sgbett.

While I was worried at $350 it could go down even further. Down down down or less doesn't seem to be painful anymore - I don't care how deep in the ass it might go.  Actually I even hope to see $120 - just for the lulz.

BTW: Is the fog liftig? Actually, Bitcointalk seems more rational the last days (or is it just my perception!?). It seems, as if if people are spot on, in what they think and articulate. I even began enjoying reading here (first for a long long time).
 

Stage 13?? We could be at 9 or 10 as well!

We are going down. Step 9 or 10 is about where we are. However I doubt even the next crash is the bottom.

Great post overall, but that part stands out. Game, set, match, Mr. Bett. Or Gbett. Or something like that.

Nice thread.

To everybody who think the bear market will continue, but still bitcoin will come up again:

Waiting is loosing.

To profit from your vision, you have to get in before the herd, not after.

Always comforting to see a few honest and straightforward people are still active on this forum. Thanks for this refreshing thread.

Exactly what is the point? Who cares where we are anymore?

Clearly not you, because you aren't signed in to an internet forum concerned with bitcoin, and posting on the forum specifically designated for speculating. OH WAIT.

We're not here to warn the delusional bulls. Nothing can be done for the permabulltards and cultists. Their mind is made up: Bitcoin is going to the moon no matter what we say.

We're here to warn the newbies still sitting on the fence, most of whom will lose their savings if they sink money into this pyramid scheme.

Such unselfish acts of kindness these trolls aspire to  ::)

Some of the people you call selfish might have honestly lost a lot of money in this and might actually be trying to prevent outsiders from getting in. Outsiders that have no clue of course.

No. The blockchain can handle 2.7 transactions per second. Meanwhile, Visa and Mastercard are handling millions of transactions per second. Bitcoin offers no security and no benefit for the average consumer. It's extremely slow, expensive, unstable, unreliable, cumbersome, easy to steal, and user-unfriendly. Were it to be adopted on a really large scale, hypothetically speaking, the blockchain would reach a size of 100TB and beyond within days, making storage impossible. It's simply not scaled to handle actual real world use. It's scaled to be a small experiment among a couple hundred crypto geeks.

Speculative value can still increase, of course, even if the blockchain tech has no potential for real world use. But the only real value of Bitcoin lies in its use as a small scale currency among a marginal group of drug addicts and child pornographers on the deep web. The price will eventually go to the single digit range to reflect that fact, even if a new Willybot or Markus might pump the price briefly up to $300 before that happens.

Bitcoin had its fifteen minutes of fame. It's not something the average Joe needs or wants, and the price development is simply a reflection of that fact.

This is reality.  Now, that's not to say that things can't be streamlined in the future, but that would require consensus among many parties and a total overhaul of the infrastructure.  I think that is unrealistic.  My hunch is many of the Bitcoin venture capitalists were unaware of these limitations.  They're wising up.  A bit too much of the bandwagonism and too little quantitative analysis.  How they manage to unwind their investments will be interesting.

Also, this doesn't even address the serious tax implications which come from using Bitcoins, since the IRS views them as capital, not currency.  Now that is one huge cluterfuck of a problem.

Visa or mastercard can still handle the transactions for us. Bitcoin is about the money, it is comparable to USD for example. Not the payment system.

If you're suggesting that it replace Western Union, I totally agree.  Good riddance to that shit.

Bitcoin is an emerging technology.  That being said, most of the people invested and developing bitcoin refuse to acknowledge the issues with the protocol and currency as it is currently being used.  Several Altcoins have addresses these issues.  Anonymous transactions, Darkcoin.  Deflation/Inflation feedback, Peercoin, Transaction times and blockchain trust issues, pretty much any altcoin.  There is more adoption of bitcoin, but not much development.  Sidechains, where are we with that?  Peercoin has more progress with sidechains or some form of that than bitcoin or any other altcoin.  

I am not trying to be a troll, but this should disturb investors in my opinion.  It probably will not because they do not understand the technology, so expect another good bubble in the next couple of years.

Rather the opposite. They can handle all the small transactions if they can do it better, in the market, then they can clear out in bitcoins. Off chain transactions.

Anyway, the intrinsic payment system in bitcoin is not that bad, if you discount the future changes. Remember, an international credit card transaction might include ten institutions, each having their own system, backup systems, backup storage with tens of copies. The latency is 6 months, armies of people are necessary to run it.

You can run a full node on a home computer. No backup is necessary or wanted, the node is the base system and the backup at the same time. Any fool can do it, there is no need for a job contract, all transactions are completely cleared after an hour.

The developers and others have analyzed it. Storage and network is not a problem. There will always be a limit, that is why transactions will cost something for the users.

Why would a CC company convert USD debt into Bitcoins?

It sounds like you're suggesting that the credit card companies would use Bitcoin as a money transfer backbone.  Why bother?  They might as well manage their own internal ledger and not deal with a public blockchain.  Same goes for banks (and of course, this is exactly what they do).  Honestly, the only area where I see you having a point is in the insane amount of overhead involved in banking.  Competition would improve that, in theory, but there isn't much competition at that echelon of power.  One positive side-effect of involving people in the process is the reversibility of transactions.  That is a huge feature in banking.  One bank burns another and there will be hell to pay.  It opens the door to negotiations when people make mistakes.  About the only parties who don't like chargebacks are merchants (understandably).

They want to do it, when the merchants only want bitcoins, no USD debt money, not before. Probably, the function will be taken over by new companies, not the old. If bitcoin succeeds.

That would mean essentially that the dollar (and necessarily, pretty much all other national currencies) would be completely usurped by Bitcoin.  I wouldn't hold my breath.

Not stopping breathing, but with a proper bitcoin stash you could breathe slower...

That's why we'll have to use more than one chain. The problem lies with the retarded notion of bitcoin for worlddomination and the idea of being the only coin. It can't be. We have to use more than one blockchain. That's why it is overvalued and alts are undervalued. This is going to be corrected this year. We come out with 10$ to 50$ bitcoin and some hefty gains in alts. It has already begun.

gavin gave a proposal to solve that issue this month didn't he?

a somewhat exponential increase of the blocksize assuming the tech does catch up

1. Bitcoin is a store of value that can not be manipulated. Visa is a company that sells plastic cards and a runs a transaction mechanism to exchange fiat.
It's Apple Computers vs an apple farm thing.

2. Please study Moore's law, 100TB is around the corner. My first hard drive was 20MB.

3. Fuck average Joe.

Exocytosis really is _the_ butthurt bull from the last bull run.

Posting about 100k coins in January 2014, being goxed, and then posting the same bitter doomer spam on price weakness. He is too chicken to actually short the market himself. Instead he degrades himself by bashing bitcoin here during price weakness with the hope of buying in at a lower price, when, magically the price will inexplicably take off into the stratosphere enriching him in the process of course.

If the price reaches even double digits (which is highly doubtful) then he will be too much of a chicken shit to buy in. Just as he failed to buy in at 160.

I am not feeling "The Despondency Stage", since the future is still very bright for Bitcoin.

Well done McFly, you illustrate my point exactly by stating you can't imagine it. Then go an and rehash the same arguments as to why it won't happen.

It might not happen, sure. The implication being, that it might. I know you think it won't, you've made that clear. I'll give you another crack at it though - What if it does?

^ Hopeless.

Reminds me of the Ideological Turing Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test). In general, it's a lot more instructive to listen to the viewpoints of someone who can (correctly) summarize his opponents' viewpoints than to someone who can't.

I know there's a number of "conditional bulls" in here that can see some good chance for a long-term prospect of Bitcoin being useful, and the asymmetry of the market bet on that event being strongly in their favor right now, but they're not blind to the possibility of it being a failure mostly, one way or the other.

Same for "conditional bears", by the way, who can see a chance for Bitcoin to succeed, but consider it rather unlikely, and the bet at current market price not to be in their favor. Fair enough, I can follow that line of thinking.

What I really don't care about are viewpoints that can be summarized as "It can't possibly fail." or "It can't possibly succeed." Failure to even answer OP's simple question about a significant adoption scenario means you pretty clearly fall into that category.

We have to go past the 'Despondency Stage' before a real break out occurs.

The exchange rate is still reflective of tiny speculative trade volume and only a blip of use. It could move up or down 10x from here in short order and would still not be indicative of long-term adoption or "failure".