Bitcoin Forum

I'll admit that the last few months have turned me into a pessimist, at least short-term. I'm in it for the long haul but to see so little progress when you're accustomed to it coming so rapidly raises questions. So - regarding this year:


Ever since the big run last December, "good news" has been scarce in my eyes. The only "good news" that is certain to happen this year is Overstock accepting BTC on orders internationally - what affect, if any, that will have on the world market is yet to be known. Now, a lot of people recently have been claiming that "Wall Street Money" is going to start pouring in relatively soon, but I have no idea what they're basing that off of. Keep in mind that this is the same group that produced dozens of "OMG OMG TO THA M00N" threads yesterday when BTC went up 30 bucks.

My confidence wanes.

I don't know what I'm asking. I guess the point of this thread is to get people to post positive things that actually have merit.

"To tha m00n" doesn't mean much without a citation.

Anyone got a pick-me-up? And a source?

Gox's 200,000+ btc is going to be liquidated soon, and that could be bullish or bearish depending on how you look at it. Some people view the recent positive assessment by financial analysts as bullish. I don't really see much on the horizon right now that would draw the masses that we'd need to go from $500 to $5000. The average person who had heard of btc has only heard negative things about it; hacks, stolen coins, drugs, nerds, etc.

Facebook connects with Changetip --> bitcoin tipping on Facebook will be possible soon.
https://www.changetip.com/tip-online/facebook

Bitcoin opens on eTrade

How can a sudden rush of supply be good?

[citation needed]¹

First Chinese ATM. Due to it's success China will be forced to go in to bitcoin.
Prediction: China will go all in and place many ATMs. It will go all in and build all kind of bitcoin infra like ATMs to bring bitcoin to the masses and make chinese the bitcoin marketleader :) (i'm not chinese)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-china-bitcoin-idUSBREA3F0MK20140416

http://www.coindesk.com/new-colorado-marijuana-vending-machines-accept-bitcoin/

If liquidating you do not want to kill the market unless you want to kill bitcoin.
True that this would cause a sideways market for a long time if they dump the coins for fiat.
On the otherhand if all goxxed get their BTC then it could trigger more trading, hodling or usage of bitcoin which is good.

And also it is good that people might get some of their coins back.  More user confidence.  They probably wouldn't all sell because the price would start to drop and those buy walls would kick in.  The smart ones wouldn't dump right away, they would just hold until the price goes and then maybe sell a few.

Opinions don't require citations.

This thread does  :P

I did some Googling - best I got was this:

http://www.paymentssource.com/news/coinmkt-using-e-trade-to-move-funds-to-digital-currency-exchange-3016744-1.html

Cool. Thanx for the link.

“It’s quick, it’s efficient, it’s trackable.” Gotta love it.

Google payments accepts bitcoin.

It went up too fast too high in November, it has to cool down for a few months. There are new coins mined every day that have to find buyers too, don't forget that supply of bitcoins is always increasing. Don't expect a new run for another 3 months, since the network effect has to work its way through the internet and has to sink in to people's minds, and don't forget that summer is a slow season in most investments anyway, people are on vacation. September is when things may start to pick up again. Sorry if that doesn't raise your confidence much.

ANSWER:

1. Media coverage

2. Speculation

3. Development

4. Adoption by merchants/businesses.

I just had a random thought and though I'm sure it's been discussed before ... just imagine how much of a shitstorm this would cause:

Random picture tweet from Tim Cook early June

Picture of QR code with Apple logo drawn in the middle

Has surprise conference next day

"SUPRISE MOTHAFUCKAS. I'M HERE TO ANNOUNCE THE FIRST INSURED BITCOIN WALLET we're gonna charge you a buttload of fees to make it worth it to us, but fuck it, safe coin storage and itz apple amirite guiz???. iWallet!! EVERYONE REJOICE AND CREAM YOUR iPANTS ! **crowd goes wild, bitcointalk and reddit have civil war over how this is awesome/the worst news in the history bitcoin, price gets huge pump regardless**"

What spurs the next run?

Greed.
Markets boil down to Greed vs Fear, in essence it really is that simple.
Fear has been in charge for several months and Greed is preparing to take over.

http://www.bonniehill.net/pics/fear-greed.gif


One (of many) fundamental reasons for BTC to rally is the Dollar getting weaker:
http://buelahman.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/crash_dees.jpg

I will answer your question.

For Bitcoin to go parabolic once again, it is going to require some kind of capital flight. That is Bitcoins real practical advantage over conventional finance. A means of circumventing a nations fiscal controls. This could happen at anytime. It has happened before in that April 2013 was attributed to capital flight from Cyprus and Dec 2013 was attributed largely to Chinese investors piling into Bitcoin in order as a means of circumventing their own countries capital controls. This is why the PBOC has given Bitcoin a bit of a disapproving frown and we have been in a bear market ever since.

Without a surge in capital flight interest, Bitcoin will trend back to where it would have been had China never entered the market to begin with, give or take a few hundred K's worth of stolen, seized, or court appropriated BTC or so. However, it is not as simple as that. People outside of Bitcoin view it as monstrously overvalued and dangerously volatile at the moment. People within Bitcoin however have greatly inflated sense of price expectations that are not possible under present conditions, but these inflated expectations help facilitate some tremendously rapid pump n dump efforts. Vast sums of money gladly piled into Bitcoin at $750, $540, $400, and sub $400. Recent counter trend recovery's have shown a figure well short of $750, and then just around bang on $540 to now be sums where buying pressure in Bitcoin completely dries up. I am in no doubt that we will be able to add $400 to that list of important resistance points soon enough. Without some new and significant avenue of interest in Bitcoin, this patter of grinding bear market, dump, pump, dump and then yet more grinding bear market is set to continue until either Bitcoin gets so depressed that the pump n dump mechanics of the current market yields diminishing returns to the point of it just not being that worthwhile anymore; or until some X-Factor kicks in and the most likely X-Factor for me will be some kind of emergency capital flight out of a crisis stricken nation.

The increased adoption that people talk about for everyday legal purchases will take a very long time to gain traction, far longer than any Bitcoiner's patience can endure. This isn't like Facebook that entered onto the scene with practically no meaningful competition. The fiat currencies already have the 'medium of exchange' market well and truly tied up and are frankly much safer, easier, and more convenient to use for 99% of everyday purchases.

In summation, for Bitcoin to go on another bull-run, the demand has got to come-in and overturn the churning of the present manipulated pump n dump forces of the present overvalued and declining market. The only conceivable avenue of such interest at this point in time is capital flight. Therefore, if ya are all praying to get another Bitcoin bull-run anytime soon, then ya are all praying for economic collapse, misery, and suffering, in some non US hegemony compliant economy that is getting beaten with some geo-political stick.

Depressing and likely accurate.

How about this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/business/walmart-to-offer-customers-money-transfers-between-stores.html?_r=0


Should be easy peasy for bitcoin to pick up these customers, unless they like to pay 10%.

Haha what are they thinking?

This definately is very bullish for Bitcoin :D

Pay 10% to who?

10% to Walmart or 10% to the LocalBitcoins vendor who exchanges the fiat currency that the customers require?

Except that the 10% premium will have to be paid at both ends, i.e, 20%.

Except that the 10% premium is actually much higher than 10% when BTC are exchanged into physical cash. i.e. much more than 20%.

I would go with Walmart personally.

Almost noone sane pays 10% premium when buying Bitcoins, go to Walmart, byee

Oh really.

Then perhaps you could tell me how u can send me Bitcoins, and I can turn them into cash in my local area, paying less than 10%.

I challenge you to tell me how it's done. Infact, I guarantee that you can't tell me how it's done because it is not possible.

Coinbase takes 1%.

Although I guess the wait defeats the purpose. Even if you already have an account it'll take 3 or so business days for the money to appear in your bank.

Bitstamp takes between 0.2% and 0.5%.

But for that, I need a bank account and cash transfer customers aren't using bank accounts. They are paying cash to some desk in some location, allowing somebody to go to some desk in some other location and get given the specific sum of cash.

If I was using a bank account, I could transfer the money for free. I don't need Western Union, I don't need Walmart, and I don't need Bitcoin.

At this moment it may be hard if you want cash only for your Bitcoins.

If you want cash only it might be good to have enough cash at hand and sell at Coinbase so it doesn't really matter if you have to wait a couple of days because you have enough cash at hand.

It only sucks if you are 100% in Bitcoins and need to pay something what can only be paid in cash but that wouldn't be that smart at this moment since Bitcoin is still a very new technology.

We don't need the masses to get to 5000/BTC. We only need a few hundred million dollars of demand, and that could easily come from a single person (oligarch, sheik, etc.).

So a few hundred millions is going to raise the market cap from $6 billion to like $60 billion? Just doesn't seem very plausible to me. We'll need more than a few adopters to reach such a valuation. I don't even think bitcoin is ready for the masses. Maybe 10s of thousands of people lost coins on gox; imagine if we had mass adoption and millions of users lost money. Btc would come crashing down. Btc services need more robust security of decentralization.

Yes, because only a small fraction of total coins are available for sale. It would require more than a few hundred million dollars to permanently stay above 5000/BTC, but much less than the 54 billion dollar difference between 6 billion and 60 billion.

It is very likely that a financial crisis will trigger a panic buy maybe not in the US but in Japan (debt to gdp problem), China (housing bubble and shadow banking), Russia (capital flight and currency devaluation)or Europe (stagnant job market).

Bitcoin overtakes Western Union consistently for money transfers worldwide
With a government license from some company who does this business

Sorry I interpreted this thread as what would spur the next run, as in hypothetically.

Moneyrace
If countries figure out that this will be the basis of new wealth distribution or inter-country money system (like a new federal reserve) it might go viral.
China, US and other countries will fight each other over the coins causing the prices to go sky-high and hodlers to become billionaires :)

Please bear in mind that this discussion was built around someone (you) stating that Bitcoin could steal the physical cash transferring market from WesternUnion, MoneyGram, and now Walmart. I have just given you reasons why it can't and it won't. These high premium money transfer services are for those transferring cash where one party doesn't have access to digital banking. For people wanting to use Bitcoin to transfer money around who don't have access to digital banking the premiums that must be paid are fucking massive. Much more than the conventional cash transfer agents. Only people who want to hide their money and remain totally 100% anonymous and untrackable would use a Bitcoin - Physical Cash service.

IMHO
The collapsing faith in the dollar will lead the sheep to BTC at first it will be a means of storage for those scared of the fiat banks impending default, but soon after BTC or barter will be the only means to buy even a simple loaf of bread.
This will be similar to the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic , but this time the cause will come from china demanding
payment of all outstanding USA debt .

Why would China want to cause the collapse of US$ at this point or near future? China holds trillions of US$, they're totally vested in US$. Chinese understands the consequences of US$ collapse will be hugely detrimental to China, probably leading to economic calamity and possible revolution and regime change.

What spurs the next run?

It is worth remembering there are only 10,000 addresses with more than 100 coins currently. There will only ever be 21,000,000 coins available and over half of those are already mined and out there. Supply will constrain significantly after 2016.

My view is that bitcoin remains an incredible technology. A supranational, global internet currency which is cryptographically secure, allowing payment to someone in outer mongolia from scotland (for example Mat) in seconds. Money in the hands of the people, money given value by the the people for the first time, not the banks or government, unprintable/ or counterfeitable, existing only in the cloud.

The internet changed everything. More and more of the world will irreversibly become connected in the coming years. An rising tide that will flow until only the very poorest are excluded.

I view smartphones as the internet 2.0. A personal handheld device, always connected, a powerful linux client, already with the capabilities of a desktop computer. There are 7 billion mobile phones on the planet, mainly dumbphones. I don't have figures for smartphones but you better believe that they will be ubiquitous where there is mains electricity in the next 5 years as device costs continue to fall. This is a silent global revolution. A groundswell of ubiquitous powerful personal computing and communication devices for the masses.

Bitcoin is simply the next logical evolution of money. Money in the cloud, secure, and most importantly accessible and spendable on your phone. It can be cheaply integrated into online services avoiding the legacy banking system entirely. And it is.

I understand you are bearish Mat. But I wonder if you mistake being whipsawed a few times by the bitcoin market price, for the astonishing upside potential that bitcoin represents. I think you are missing the big picture.

Mathematically enforced scarcity drove up the price as bitoin users rose from a handful to a few. With 50k downloads of blockchain.info from the google play store and only 10,000 users with 100 coins or more the upside should be obvious. It's a big world out there and soon large swathes of it are coming online.

Infrastructure is being built. Political and central banking opposition and dirty price interference tactics will soon start in earnest if they havent already. Barring internet shutdown or global war, or a global political consensus against bitcoin, there is only one way this project ends. Everyone on this forum knows it. The cat is out the bag. If it isn't bitcoin it will be an usurper.

What other asset would you wish to hold for the next five years?

Nice clear thinking for a change.

I would digress however on the issue of Bitcoin being a currency that for the first time is being given value by the people. All forms of money that ever did exist was given it's value by the people. Problem is that not all people are equal. Whilst Bitcoin may serve to shift human consciousness a bit in terms of what money is perceived to be. Their are far too many big boys around who can take the Bitcoin market and do what they like with it. And then there is the issue of Satoshi's 1.5 MBTC. I shall not go into my theories on 'Satoshi Nakamoto' again here, but if Mr Nakamoto just happened to be a Big Boy working for 'The Man', then Bitcoin is fated to prove to be nothing other than a further evolution in the control grid and will ultimately find it's purpose in some range of nefarious deeds that have not very much to do with human liberty or freedom.

I am bearish on Bitcoin because it has been going down overall and will continue to do so. With that said, I shall never short Bitcoin again as I have discovered that engaging in this activity opens a whole psychological can of worms that I am not good at dealing with. By the same token, I shall never use leverage in Bitcoin ever again. The next time I shall buy Bitcoins is when we are back down at the lower range of the trendline. Next stop mid $200 range. Even if I fuck up doing this and the market goes much further down than I anticipated, at least I 'own' physical Bitcoins and I have the option of holding out indefinitely until I can get my money back. Up until now, providing BTC has been bought at lower reaches of trading range, the opportunities have always arisen for the Bitcoin buyer to break even or profit. With leverage, long or short, the same thing can't be said.

I think i first heard about bitcoin in 2011. It was the concentration of coins in a handful of hands that made me dismiss it as a fad/scam. When it crashed to 2 dollars I read about it again and my original dismissal was confirmed. Oops :)

It is naive to expect currency / wealth to not be held in a pareto distribution. Ultimately all market actors should be interested in the price eventually rising, even if they induce volatility to increase market share along the way.

What worries me slightly is the central banks using fiat to buy up bitcoins and use destructive trading patterns on the exchanges to crash the price and threaten adoption. I guess this is something bitcoin will have to endure and given its trading history that may not even be a problem as long as the stair step rises continue as the user count climbs. Even if the nakamoto coins were revealed to be US gov, then I wouldn't have a problem with that. The rules that govern coin creation would still apply.

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I am bearish on Bitcoin because it has been going down overall and will continue to do so.
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It has been going down? You mean its the same price it was 4 months ago and 50 times more than it was a year and a half ago?
Please explain how its been going down overall?