Bitcoin Forum

As the bull market in Bitcoin goes forth from here there will be more and more riders falling from the saddle.

Bull riding is not a natural act either in the rodeo world or the financial one. Both require nerve, consistency, a level head and ironically, strong hands.

You need to be able to master two of the most instinctive and powerful emotions humans can have. Fear and greed.

Fear that the market will turn and cut you to ribbons, stealing your hard earned gains. Fear that you will sell early and miss a huge part of the ride. Fear you will sell late having let greed carry you too far.

Greed that holds you in past the point of reason. Greed that can make you blind to changes in market strength indicators. Greed that can cause you to use margin or over extend yourself in ways in appropriate to your circumstances. Greed that causes you to sell a winner in pursuit of a super winner. For instance selling Bitcoin gaining 90% a year to chase a hot stock tip.

Additionally, you need to be able to stand on the courage of your convictions when all around you are losing theirs. Already we are seeing post after post about selling, swapping, not buying etc. The scared will call over and over for corrections, deep horrible corrections.

"Experts" will call 100's of tops sometimes with dire looking charts, sometimes with dire sounding words, sometimes with both. They will be wrong.

This bull is running because of astounding fundamentals, a unique time in history and tectonic scale shifts in the economic and political worlds. It is not running because of luck, coincidence or the sudden good will of bankers.

It will not stop running or even slow in a meaningful way until the forces propelling it forward stop doing so. Even a partial list of things that would need substantial change to stop the upward velocity of the digital currency is daunting.

The fed would need to stop its reckless currency debasement, the Federal gov't would need to cut spending well beyond the point there is any political will to do so. Interest rates would have be raised several points above the real rate of inflation not the bogus one they trot out on big lie day.

Jobs by the millions would have to magically appear and people who have been on unemployment for years will have to be able to and want to take them. Thousands of pages of bureaucratic regulations choking businesses would have to be repealed. The housing market would have to rebound, the bond market too. The stock market would have to see millions of individuals who can't remember back a few years to ruined 401K's come flooding in.

I left off flying pigs and a reunion of the beatles but you get my point I am sure. The fact of the matter is that the Bitcoin run is not about Bitcoin at all, it is about an accurate reading on the part of people the world over on much larger concerns.

Why Bitcoin more so than gold and silver? Because it has a better set of conditions. For years I listened to ...

Well they are pretty quiet now, during all the very real turmoil in the Middle East and Japan and job market and housing market and dollar melt down Bitcoin not only held its ground it made ENORMOUS gains on king gold.

.... The percentage of people who know about Bitcoin is nearly zero.

Bitcoin is unstoppable at this point. It will be for some time to come. You will need your courage far more than it will need your faith. New buyers will be only too glad to take your stack if you falter.

(a little bit edited)

I concur.

+1

Centuries' worth of bad economics is finally coming home to roost, all squeezing through a tiny hole called Bitcoin.

This the future

I BTCelieve

Great post, excellent title. We are pioneers of this revolutionary currency. It is finding its light and may have a bumpy road ahead, full of much excitement and some doubt. Never back down and never lose faith. My bitcoins are with me for the long haul.

In the long-term, yes it is. In the short term it is stoppable just fine. It would correct to $5 before you'd complete writing this awesome post if, for example, MtGox would get closed and assets seized by Japanese authorities. It would quickly go to 0 if, for example (a less likely event) a vulnerability would be found in the software.

So let's keep a calm head. This rocket will fly, but it will have several landings in the process. The faster it goes up now - the longer would be the fall later.

buzzkiller

Bull riding is fun, until you get thrown off.  The people who were left with a mouth full of dirt on the way from $32 to $2 know that feeling.  The current ride is fun and I'm loving it.  Seeing my bitcoin stash appreciate 10% day in, day out, without lifting a finger.  It's great.  But I have no idealism about it lasting into the great yonder.

Courage needs to be coupled with intelligence and humility lest it morph into hubris.

I've downloaded the original post a couple of years ago from a PM forum. As I'd said, I made slight changes to it mainly by replacing the word "silver" with "bitcoin". Needless to say, the original writer was a hard core silverbug, and I guess that some silverbugs here may tell his name (ID).

ok, now you've done it.  you have to tell us.  does his ID end in "box"?

great post btw.

edit: or more likely his name ends with "Morgan".  just noted you said "PM forum".

+1

+1
Very nice.

Where can I buy the T-Shirt with that?

I have no idea where the top will be, but I'm pretty sure it'll be followed by an enormous crash.  So, you know, woohoo!

To single digits?  :D

Bitcoin cannot fail as a currency. It's not a matter of if, but when. How long can you hold an asset that may or may not be liquid when you need to exchange it? That's the key. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Behold! That bitcoin is being sold for $16,000!

Note: RMB99998.88 yuan = $16K

http://img1.soufun.com/album/2013_01/24/1359031549054_000.jpg

Oh, I love it when Proudhon makes a prediction... 7.20 will be the high for 2012... 14.3x will be the high for 2013 (that one actually didn't even last 24 hours, a record for Proudhon). Woohoo indeed!

The original post deserves to be dubbed by James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman (for lack of a Don LaFontaine), with Two Steps from Hell epicing in the background. Most elucidating post sir, you have my thanks.

Even if the edge-exchanges went away for some reason, it wouldn't stop people putting up sites for price discovery and local trading - or other means. Bitcoin is bigger and better than what crappy sovereign currency it is valued in.

Some people being taught a lesson in trading right now.  Quick run up to $19.20 and then a nice collapse to $15.50 and still going.  Don't let greed get in the way of good judgment.

Pulling buy orders en masse, pulling the price down further then buying on the up swing into another bubble would be kinda fun right now.  Whoever is doing is is making a nice profit.

The original writer was AgStacker who put this post on Kitco Forum's Silver Discussion Group a couple of years ago.

New buyers will be only too glad to take your stack if you falter.

Agreed

As a history major who studied the Industrial Revolution with great interest and amazement, I believe the Internet, global communications, and p2p, will prove to have an impact on a scale magnitudes greater. The faltering of the economic and political power structures IS A SHIFT of reality we have yet to comprehend.