Bitcoin Forum

hi, I invested a lot at the beginning of this year thinking bitcoin would have risen again as usual, I bought many btc when it was 830 and some after when it was 660. I waited for the pump but things are getting bad. I am wo4ried. I am 26 yo I am not rich and I invested a lot of my savings. I can live without, ok, but they were my savings. What should I do now? is this the end? Will bitcoin rise again at least until 830?

If you sell now, you lose.

You haven't lost anything at this point until you sell your BTC. hold onto them.
Wait for the market to bounce. A lot of market manipulation going on right now.
Part of me thinks this is to shake out the weak hands before the next pump.

i pray God things are as you say. I hold on so far but now things are getting serious. Months passed and I have only lost money. My idea at the beginning was optimistic, I said, in late 2013 it went down, in 2014 it will, it has to rise again, as usual. But so far, I was wrong.
I can tell you, I invested more than 80% of all I had. If my parents knew that... I would be in serious trouble. Part of it was their present for my 18 years and for my university studies.

This is part of why common advice is to not invest more than you can afford to lose - it leads to having to make decisions based mostly on emotion. 

You can read what people have to say here, but ultimately most posters and traders have their own agendas, and it can be difficult to differentiate that from legitimate advice for you.  Buying in for the first time on the upswing of the most recent bubble is a very tough position to be in, though.  Personally, I would suggest asking yourself if you believe in the underlying fundamentals of the technology, and whether it has room to grow.

Yeah, don't sell. I know it's scary when the price drops, but at the end of the day nothing's changed fundamentally - the technology is still sound.

Try and do something to take your mind off it - I just lost a bunch of (fiat) money with the crazy flash crash we just had on BTC-e, was really pissed off... But I just took a walk outside, enjoyed a cold beer, and now I feel a lot better.  ;)

Try to remember this is a long term investment and the fundamentals are still great. The downside potential from here is quite low, while the upside potential is very high. When market is feeling despair and fundamentals are strong, it is typically the best time to buy, but most people panic and sell.

It's rough going through your first bitcoin crash, but hang in there. Imagine how people felt in 2011 crashing from $32 to $2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741236.0

As MRKLYE said, if you sell now you loose. Just hang in there.
 I was in the same situation not long ago. Looks pretty bad when everything keeps falling down, but after rain comes sun. Hang on and enjoy the ride. :)

What was the time frame you were hoping to make money from?

I put money in expecting it to be a multi-year deal. This year has been lots of flailing and noise but things are quietly being put together that'll pay off long term.

I'd be worrying if it was still ping ponging around the $3-600s far into next year, but won't be sweating until that transpires.

I once bought some coins at 180$ on the climb to 266$ .  Some laughed at me when it crashed....  I sold them at 850$   
(bought some of them back now)

its the same story every climb and crash
just wait

1. You should not have invested more than you could accept losing.
2. Only you can make this decision. It's a gamble. Lots of people believe the price will rise again, but even if it does this could take *years*. You could always cash part out just so you aren't totally broke... 50% maybe?

If it were me, I'd hold, since I believe in the long term potential. But this would be over a time scale of years.

That's hard. You should not have invested in this form. It's even harder to give you some advice now.

In your position I would refuse to sell, waiting and hoping for 830, to load off a heavy part of your holdings. That could sound a bit insane as I would guess if it rises to 830 it will rise more. But it seems that you have invested to much.

It's nearly impossible to give a good advice, as it depends on a lot of factors, starting with your own personality.
If I invest (no matter in what) from start on my investment has gone to 0,00$ (in my mind), that makes strong. But you can't do it that way, if you invest too much.

All you can do is hold and wait, but bitcoin is just like any other investment and you should only invest what you can afford to lose. Clearly you didn't and unfortunately some people just have to learn the hard way on that.

I think a lot of people are in your position op. A lot of people saw bitcoin as a magical money making machine and got in at the peak with all the excitement when it seemed like it was only on its way up and up, though people quickly realised it could go both ways.

The price of Bitcoin is not some straight line that always goes up, sometimes it goes down. But the fact remains, you still have the same amount of Bitcoins that you've always had. Its a bad idea to buy high and sell low if you intend to make a profit.

Either buy more low or take a vacation.

Do you still believe in the future of BTC and plan to stay in long term? If so, then selling now would not really be advantageous to you unless you plan to keep watch and buy back in at lower prices (which to be fair seems a fairly good chance of happening right now).

Rich people need donators  ;D

The other thing is that it's one thing for a newcomer to look at the charts, see all the bubbles and think 'oh this is easy, just buy and wait' . What they fail to take account of is all the bits on the charts where the price was crashing, often unexpectedly. It's not like this is the first time people have bought in near to an ATH and felt like a sucker later.

I invest 100% except beer money. My parents do know that. My old man also has a few coins, and he is worried but not dumb enough to sell at a loss.

Hold your coins. It will pay off.

First of all, don't listen to the idiots on here. That's what got you into this situation in the first place. The "buy and hold" is a sales tactic of the early investors so they can cash out their bitcoin slowly overtime without the price crashing. Many on here will tell you that since you've held for this long, you might as well stick it out. They'll tell you that we've bottomed out (rpitiela and others) or that "this has all happened before" because they either want to sell to you, or they're also in over their heads and misery enjoys company.

You can choose to stick it out if you like and pray for a rebound, but just keep in mind that there is no goldren rule that we won't continue to drop and nothing is off limits, including $300s, $200s or worse.

agreed

Impros88, look at this users name.  Also, note that the user Chuckee and Falllling are likely the same person.  It would (likely) be the suggestion of many people on this board to use the ignore feature on these trolls.  This feature can be activated by click "ignore" on the left side of the page under their username.

Spend some more time reading about and thinking about bitcoins fundamentals and how markets behave.  Then decide for yourself whether you want to hold, sell or buy. (personally I think its a good moment for holding or buying).

The "early adopters" don't dump/sell their coins at local bottoms.  They sell on the rises and peaks.  If you took even one minute to look at the number of bitcoin days destroyed and how they correlate with bubbles, it'd be very obvious.

The real question is: what do you have to gain by telling OP to sell?  You're either looking to buy from the weaker hands, or your some neckbeard that's butthurt because you "missed out".

''Buy and hold'' is an investment tactic.

50 bitcoins on Jan 1 is still 50 bitcoins. Hold.

Listen to this man. Trolls are terrible on those boards and need to be weakened. Ignore function is a gift, use it like it can save your life.

As a long time Forex trader who has now converted to a crypto trader let me let you in on a little secret. Please try to understand this, altho the price has lowered you have not physically "LOST" anything until you sell. You still have the amount of money in bitcoin that you bought, just because the price is not where you want it, does not necessarily mean you have lost. On an average you basically paid 770 USD per bitcoin. And yes the price is about 477 as I am writing this, however you have not yet lost anything, if you sell now you will most certainly lose money. As long as you can carry on in finances for a while holding on to them will not hurt you, but selling them now will cost you a lot of money.


 The big banks do this very trick in Forex every day, they will sell a pumpload of a currency that they bought at very low prices, scaring the living shit out of people like you in hopes all of you will also sell, what this does is drastically lower the price of the currency giving them the ability to buy a whole lot more at a lot lower price than they were looking at 12 hours ago. The ones who sell, go to sleep angered they lost 200 to 300 dollars per coin/trade but happy they still were able to salvage something. Sometimes you will feel refreshed and wake up and check to see how much lower it went and to your amazement it has jumped up over what you paid for it. In other scenerios and more logical time frames you can watch it and in a day to a week or worst case scenario possibly even a month the price magically pops up where they would have made a HUGE profit.

So to answer your question, if you can afford to hold them it is not going to cost you anything to just keep them, because if you do sell them now you will definitely lose roughly 300+ dollars per coin.

As I've said before, my only motivation is to help others see the light. I cut my looses many weeks ago and now I want to help others take the first step forward from the hive mind. I am not advising OP to buy or sell, but I am encouraging him to think clearly and critically about the advice from those on here such as you who are in the same boat as him and likely to give biased advice.

Except you're not helping anyone by making them realize a loss, if in fact they're holding at a loss.  What's the motivation for making them sell at a local minima other than to lose money?  Are you going to be here for them if they sell right now and tomorrow we're above $520?  Otherwise you literally posted a whole paragraph outlining why you think people here are saying it's a good buying opportunity and we're all idiots and that OP should get out.  Bitcoin is not dead, these swings do happen occasionally, and any look at the historical charts will show that.

The speculation subforum is a vile and ruthless place.  NO ONE should be here looking for advice, because just as you think that people here are talking their book to pump, there are people here talking to dump.

Im new here to for like ~8 months and i can tell you for sure that you need to hold youre coins. Selling now is the dumbest thing you can ever do! Jezus christ man is is really that hard to see Bitcoin long-term?

New technology can take years to be rolled out. You better off listening to Rpitiela and others to be a succesfull Bitcoiner.

Forget about price for a while, how likely is Bitcoin to be less popular and less used next year ? Sell or hold based on this, this is how I doing it

If anyone wants to take the risk of taking advice from people on these forums, they should only do so if the person has an avatar or a registration date pre Sept-2013.  These are the people that have been through a number of these cycles and have seen how this usually plays out.  Advice should certainly not be taken from accounts created in the last five months.

Your looses huh? Fuck you. Welcome to ignore.

The above is a bias and wishful thinking on your part. All the way down from the $600s people have been saying that we've reached a new bottom and we're at a great buying opportunity, so I'm not singling you out specifically. You have no idea if this is a "local minima" or not, but the downtrend suggests that we have further to go. One important lesson that many have learned in 2014 is "never fight the tape".

lol as i see you, you wil nto sell when price will bounce to 830 again, but you will wait another fall latter on :P

Bitcoin is still software in beta stage and a highly volatile, highly speculative investment.  I'm sorry to hear about your losses after buying in at over $800 and $600.  The losses are only realised when you convert to another currency, but nonetheless the losses are real right now in terms of your spending power.  You've lost value and it's natural you're feeling nervous.  Will the price rise?  Probably, seeing as difficulty keeps marching upwards and bitcoin block rewards will keep halving.  Chances are you'll have a lot of people cheering you on to hold your investment.

Chuckee I apologize now but if you had the brains god gave to a goose you would see how just ignorant what you replied was. makes me wonder what your true intentions are, and seeing your post I clearly see you are just angered because you too made the stupid mistake not long ago of selling at a loss because yu can not understand charts and did not research the bitcoin currency. If you take just a little bit of time and pick a few different exchanges and deeply look at the charts you will see, much like any currency fiat or crypto, they all have bubbles, they all go up and down, they all have a normal area,they all have highs and lows, thats why we trade everyday. the bottom line is currency trading is a 4 billion dollar a day industry, thats right 4 BILLION dollar industry daily, what that means chuckee is 4 billion dollars are made daily trading currencies all over the world.

The advice you gave this poor kid is just wrong, I hope he ignores your stupidity and seks better advice from veterans here who have been thru the losses, who have struggled thru the bubbles or people like me who have been trading all forms of currencies for years.

trading is most certainly full of risks, and when you click the mouse you are making a gamble, but to foldwhen your holding 4 aces is just stupid in my opinion.

Can I guarantee this kid Bitcoins is going to hit the mark he needs it to hit in the exact timeframe he hopes it to, no none of us can, but I can say if you just look around this forum the proof is in the posts so far you and your cousin failling are the only two ney sayers that stand out, with a community who has this many people with somany positive thoughts you can not deny the proof in their experiences.

Life is chance and risk and you can't really predict anything etc.  But there's a book "How We Decide" http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547247990, that explores the subject of decision making (what your doing) and they use the stock market as an example.  I think it applies perfectly.  In a nutshell (from memory) the conclusion is to NEVER make stock market decisions with "your gut" or involving emotion.  This is the time to be rational and cold.

Bitcoin certainly looks like it has a bright future ahead of it.  The price will go much higher with greater adoption.  It's an experiment that's risky, but look around you - everything is risky that was once considered safe!  

Best advice I ever read was to buy it, save your paper wallet / password somewhere safe, and forget about it for 2 years.  Stop looking at the price, and look at the important things like merchant adoption etc.

A shining example of the critical thinking skills of the bulltards on this forum. "You disagree with my investment strategy? Fuck you, man!!1"

yeah great advice from one of them.

You often can tell good advices from bad ones from the simple fact that the latters comes almost always with insults or fear inducing clues like "cut losses now or lose everything".
Good advices are seldom trying to force you do anything but rather try to reason you by means of logic.

You are idiot! I have successfully shorted bitcoin since $600, which makes me an intelligent gentleman.

 You don't know the good advice from the bad until it is too late.

Hey I can sympathize you.  I've lost a lot of money in stocks before as well.  I think the thing you should do is sell as much of your holdings to get to a position you can accept losing everything.

You are stressed out because your position is too big.  The price might go up or down more.  Nobody knows.  What you know is the size of your position and how much you stand to win OR lose.  Try to think defensively out it

Ignore the pumpers here.  They are perma bulls.  They don't care about your money.  I have no position so I don't care if price of bitcoin goes up or down.  I just don't like to see people get suckered into a pyramid/ pump & dump

 Then you are the dude who took Impross88's money!  He has no need for your advice, he needs your money.

 
I have been in and out, going short and going long in Bitcoin and since 2014, have been losing money big time. Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and try and swallow the buy and hold pill for several weeks whilst I worked offshore, just as all my merry chums on this forum suggested that I should do.

I bought at $620 about 6 weeks ago. Refusing to take another single hit whilst Bitcoin bobbed around sub $600, I held. Afterall, Buy and hold is a tactic! As the baseline of the descending triangle was broken through, I decided to sell at $545. Bitstamp website fucked up my sell order however, so I took it as a 'sign', that I should hold. But the dumps kept on coming so I market sold at $535, cementing another $1500+ loss.

Perhaps my purest experiment in 'buy n hold' is with Litecoin. I initially bought at $11, sold at $41. Then with my profits, I bought at $37 and have held ever since. Litecoin is now worth 10* less than what I ploughed into it. I never intended to deploy a 'buy n hold' strategy with Litecoin, I just didn't care about it for some fucking mysterious reason. That will be another $1500 I can add to my 2014 crypto losses. A similar story can be told with Quark, except that Quark was a pure loss as I never made any profit in Quark ever and bought at 50% level from the very top in Dec 2013.

My suspicion is that we have had our crypto craze and now all the wild exuberant hype that has been factored into the price, will be steadily deflated from the market as speculators start to realise that the mania has died down, resulting in bounces that repeatedly fail to turn the bear trend technicals on their heads, resulting in increasing volumes of investment capital leaving Bitcoin, resulting in it being increasingly harder for investors to take profit out of the market, resulting in ever more capital leaving the market, resulting in steadily declining prices. As an example, I have gradually went from swishing ~$25K around in Bitcoin, to having finally withdrawn my last $7K (I never lost $18K, but have been winding down exposure gradually, in addition to losing probably around $5K-$7K) from Bitstamp back to the safety of my bank account. I now represent $0 of the Bitcoin market. As the recessive nature of the Bitcoin market ensures that there increasingly more losers than winners, there will be more and more people like me with my psychological stance towards Bitcoin, both with deep pockets as well as with shallow pockets.

If you follow Elliot Wave theory, and believe that we are in a Primary corrective Wave 4 at the moment, then Bitcoin is projected to hit $200 range sometime between now and Dec 2014. It might not do this. Perhaps some world event that somehow causes a panic flight into Bitcoin or some fairy godfather multi billion dollar hedge fund will start piling into Bitcoin with purchases on all the big exchanges. But this is the sort of thing that will be required to truly turn the inevitable and time tested post bubble market sentiment around.

If you can bare it, I would suggest that Bitcoin definitely has a future beyond this corrective Wave 4 which I believe we are in. It is up to you to decide upon what you think is the logical state of market sentiment right now.

Even amongst the most rampant bulls on this site, I am seeing signs of self delusion. I refer specifically to rpteilia's 'calling the bottom' thread (the bottom was $500). I read that and though to myself "this guy is shitting himself".

Another good example would be Ibian (net bagholder since $800) who upon hearing of the Bitcoin ETF that is to start trading out of the Channel Islands from Sept 2014, stated (and I paraphrase);
"oh man, this sucks, Bitcoin is away to take off man and I can't get any fresh funds to the exchange man and this means that I am going to totally miss out on the price explosion that is definitely going to happen man!"
That should have been a warning sign for me to sell at a small loss, but I never acted and suffered a large loss.

As for bottoms, I would suggest that the big hammer bar on the 4hr chart that took as down to $440 is as good as a reversal sign as you are going to get. Watch Bitcoin closely. I suspect it could get up to around $520 before bounce momentum runs out. Perhaps higher, who knows. If your outlook is bearish, then you shouldn't have any problems recognising when the momentum is about to run out on the retest of whatever 'high' it produces in the first instance. Look for negative divergences in peaks on RSI, OBV, etc on 4hr chart.

I hope your parents know about it.
You shouldn't invest funds for you university studies.
It's better to tell you parents about it.  Make this as a lesson and do not repeat the same mistakes.

Tell that to the OP. He's in panic and about to sell.

Impros88,
     What comes through your post is the anguish and panic.  This is the cause of every bad decision.
Here's something that might ease your fears:
"+ 6 addresses greater than 1000 BTC
Yesterday they took the opportunity to accumulate."
from
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=441336.160
The super duper bitcoin bad boys are long and going longer. 
Does that tell you something?

Like others have said, the upside potential is greater than the downside. Unfortunately, you've waited too long to cut any significant losses and doing so at this point would mean you'd have to watch the market like a hawk to call the bottom and get back in, just hoping to recoup some losses. Sure you could sell now and maybe limit some further losses, but you're gambling again. Don't take my advice, but for what it's worth if it were me, I'd hold tight and pray for the best, unfortunately.

There are a few problems with your strategy.

1. Bitcoin was never intended as an "investment". It does not behave like one and it would be extremely risky to try treating it like one. This is a social experiment and could go away tomorrow or it could be huge.

2. When investing follow the two most important rules: Only invest in something you completely understand and never invest any money unless you are willing to lose all of it.

3. Asking someone else what the price is going to be is a waste of time. Sure, you may find people with bold predictions, but they do not know anything you don't. No one knows.

best of luck

In my opinion you should just buy all you can afford (to lose) and hold your bitcoins long term.

heh, I think that's what got him into this trouble in the first place.

Bitcoin fanatic logic: Price is tanking... so buy more!!!

In any other market, people call that "compulsive gambling" and urge treatment for it. Something to consider, fellows.

This strategy worked pretty good for my Ford holdings. It's not always gambling, sometimes it's just common sense.

Tell your family you're a failure who lost all this money on magic internet shit, then kill your kids, your wife, and then finally yourself to ensure the cycle of stupidity ends with your line.

 :D   Lost your shirt did ya?

NM: Turns out you're just another buttcoin/somethingawful loser.   Remember when you guys were relevant? Me neither.

I suppose at least to our benefit you're so shitty at trolling that we don't even have to guess if you are or not. 

Thank-god for ignore.

MRKLYE gave you the best advice. I would not panic yet if I were you. You can sell now at a loss if you believe we are going to $0 and this is the beginning of the end for bitcoin. No one really knows to be honest. But it seems like your mood/confidence on bitcoin is going with the flow of whatever the general sentiment is. What has changed (besides price) since you bought bitcoin? There are still a lot of developments and plans in queue, and we may not see anything positive price wise until next year. Didn't you think there would be a risk to this investment? We are seeing the risk now... everything looks bleak and general confidence is low. Will you fold now and take the loss? Or are you going to accept this risk and have a chance at making your money back + more... even if it takes 1-2 years?


Also, dude you are 18.... losing a few grand is not a big deal. If you were married with kids used up 80% of your savings.. then I'd be worried. I have lost over $15,000 investing in stock market / crypto since 2008.... no fucks given. But a part of me says that I will eventually make it up with bitcoin.

 I doubt it tells him anything.  He doesn't know the basics of investing or he wouldn't have bet the farm.  Long and short are advanced terms...

 Okay.  Hey Impross88!
  Dai nemici mi guardo io, dagli amici mi guardi id dio!

translation CUT YOUR LOOSE

That is obviously not what he's saying fuck you about. He's saying fuck you cuz you are fallings stupid ass twin, looses is not the word you're looking for, but you still don't understand this. Depsite making the mistake countless times over multiple accounts, Cuz you're stupid.

QFT.

Selling now would be a mistake unless you need the funds in the short term.

you say your 26...

do you imagine yourself investing some savings into bitcoin ever again?

if so you did good this year, try not to let the FUD of the moment get to you.

As people are telling you, keep faith and come back in two to five months.
It will be better and you will be smiling that you went through the worst low ever.
Next time don't invest most of your money in a high-risk speculative currency it will make you sleep way better.

Why won't it go to $0 and why will it come back better than ever
 - We all have invested a lot in Bitcoin there are also people who bought at $1200.
 - Shitloads of people have mining contracts and want an ROI.
 - Wallstreet and ETFs are ready to launch.
 - Major retailers are investing in Bitcoin adoption.
 - Technology is sound and uncrackable.
 - We've been through 40 China bans, an Exchange failure (MtGOX) and several scandals.
 - ATMs popping up.
 - Official regulations on Bitcoin.
 - etc....

If Bitcoin is going to die then it will not be now.

We are currently in the bear trap / dispair phase. You will feel the need to sell but don't give in.
It might go to $100 but once it comes back it will go way further than ever before. (we hope :))

Cheer up and have a beer (or 5)!!!!!

P.S. We are all in this shithole together so as long as this forum has members you are not alone.

Without poor people there are no rich.
You choose on what side you want to end.

Bullshit.
A technical flaw would be deadly instantly, no matter about any point you describe.
But hey, you can tell your grandkids that you owned some of those digital tulip bulbs and it was a hell of a time!
And if a technical flaw is not happening, we are going to the moon, it's that simple.

i think u should keep waiting, it will go up.

I understand the way you read my post :)
I was talking about the current situation and there are no known flaws to date.

Yes true if one was to be able to crack ECDSA or be able to reverse SHA-256 and RIPEMD160 then we would have some problems.
Even then the Bicoin client can be adapted quickly through manditory update to support a different checksum of public key signing algorithm.

Yes we currently have no proof that ECDSA is safe but hey almost all SSL, HTTPS and other security systems are based on that technology.

Other than that the Dutch Tulip craze ended after three years, Bitcoin has been here longer :)

>investing life savings
>investing once it's mainstream

How does it feel being dumb money?

http://umuseke.rw/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/suicide-hanging-rope.jpg

Go ask fortune teller. Will chip fall on black?

But he has. Do you know what "unrealised losses" are?

Auktion the coins and get a high bid  ::)

I agree with most, but a flaw in bitcoin could send it to sub-zero because a lot of noobs don't understand shit of it.
I know it can be fixed, but you should agree that it would cause a big dent into crypto.
Some alt-coins will rise I guess, depending on the speed of the bitcoin fix.

I don't care about a flaw or bitcoin going to zero. I'm happy to have been a part of it.
I will hold my coins no matter what (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=619621.0)

you post 700 x in a pyramid scheme forum ?
the minds of those who are capable of such behaviour are a complete mystery to me.

Edit: typo

thus is scary but true. I will hold, even if I am not sure, as others seem, that bitcoin will rise again. Bitcoin could have been a fashion, a bubble like all other bubbles in history since 1600. Anyway I have taken my decision. If I was going to sell now I would lose 40% of my investment and it is way to much.
Anyway, thanks everyone because when you are losing thousands euros, big part of your savings, in a single week worst thing is to feel alone. You gave me hope. Maybe I am wrong again but I have  took my decision. I don't need that money to live so I will wait.
Greetings from Italy..

Hero.

You should put a bitcoin address in your sig, I would donate satoshis, to make you feel better. ;)

This guy gets it :) Listen to him, OP!

It's not:
http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/

Yes I fully agree. A flaw in the client that can be exploited for a day or two would cause Bitcoin to hit the 2 digits or lower.
Any coin that covers the security breach might get an advantage and take over.

Possibly Bitcoin will recover but it won't be pretty :)

For me too I wouldn't mind having Bitcoin after it went to zero. I'll probably frame my wallet and hang it somewhere :)

I would strongly advise holding them until at the very least you recover your savings. At a minimum I'd say there is a 90% chance we'll see $830 or more in 6-8 months. If you sell now, you are probably making a losing bet and eating huge losses that you don't have to take. I have made some very bad decisions when it comes to Bitcoin, and this advice is based on what I've learned. In the end, you've got to decide for yourself, good luck.

Sub-zero?  Meaning you'll have to pay people to haul away all your bitcoins?   :o   This is an interesting opinion you have in that case! 

Okay, I'm listening.  ;)

EDIT: If your face palm is because you think I'm being ridiculously specific, you are right if you choose to read it that way. All I'm trying to say is that the OP will likely recover his investment if he waits it out. $830 is his investment, and 6-8 months is my educated guess for how long the price might take to recover.

I just think 90% is a little optimistic, that's all. All the hodlers here seem to have an unshakable faith that price will rise again dramatically, but nobody can seem to articulate why so many who have been burned by bitcoin is 2014 would be willing to jump back into the fire again.

The hodlers know that bitcoin will either succeed, or it will fail.  If it succeeds, and it's adopted the same way other communications technologies like mp3 players, cell phones, the internet etc have been, it's going to astronomical prices in today's terms.   But if it fails, they're worth 0.    IMO the price today is more of a reflection of the markets expectation of it's long term success, than the current "value" of a bitcoin.   Then there's the day traders and the panicky weak hands, and people manipulating the price.   The long view is less stressful IMO.   I actually suspect the price will shoot up past $600 very soon, and that the prices now are a steal! 

You are right there. I guess the way I feel is that unless Bitcoin fails it will likely go back up. 10% is my guess for the odds of something catastrophic (total or near failure of bitcoin) happening. So yeah, 90% is a bit of an exaggeration now that I think about it. But I'd feel comfortable with 70%.

If you look at the 2013 bubble and compare the charts of a few months down the line with right now, you'll see that what's going on now looks an awful lot like what happened when the price dropped into the $60s for a couple weeks and then recovered. I think that's where we are now.

Honestly, I think that most of the reason for the current price drop is just people like me buying less than they otherwise would in anticipation of lower prices. Once the market feels like we are at the bottom, bulls will start buying in and we'll have a solid foundation for growth.


I agree here. My view is that as long as I only invest what I'm willing to lose (not that I'd be happy) the potential rewards far exceed the potential risks.

Without a doubt!   One of the greatest tragedies of the Bitcoin story is how the media cheated millions of people out of fortunes by warning them of the "volatility" and discouraging them from buying bitcoin.  They *should* have been telling everyone to put what they can afford to lose into and wait a few years.  Even $5 could have changed peoples lives...

Now it's more likely to succeed, so the price is higher.

Dear MatTheCat

 in zero sum game, one's losses are other people gains. So if you have more friends, please help them in investing. I love your trading advices. The more traders like you, the more gains for others.

Keep (re)tarding
Odalv.

Don't be mad.

Treat the market as though you were approaching it fresh at all times. I am watching the action Bitcoin is looking very weak. That 'bounce I was anticipating looks like it aint no bounce at all with momentum already having petered out. If I had Bitcoin, I would sell them right now at $470. If you want buy back at a lower price. Infact, I would not be half surprised if you could almost double your BTC balance between now and Dec 2014, in two well timed traded. A sell, and then a buy in $200s. Think Bitcoin can't go to $200? This time last year Bitcoin cost only half of that amount. If it does go to $200, then bull-tards on here will be hailing Bitcoin for it's 100% gains within the year!.......seriously, some here will......JimboToronto being a class example.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1102297106/guy-on-home.jpg
Jimbo Toronto, yesterday.

Despite having already crashed a lot, Bitcoin right now is looking like fucking shit. Just think of how wildly over hyped and over inflated Bitcoin was based on around 5% of all coins being traded on market, the rest being hoarded, and the China factor (knocked on the head as far as widespread adoption there is concerned) and also hooky ramping bots on Gox. Bitcoin will not die, but all the hot air must be deflated out of the market before Bitcoin can find sustainable level from which it can finally begin to serve the purpose it was intended for and then grow from there.

Right now at this moment in time, Bitcoin is looking like fucking shit.


Sorry Odalv.

But in a bear market phase of a zero sum game, the odds are stacked too heavily against day-tarders like me. Nope, I think I shall keep myself well and truly out of this cut-throat 'until the last man standing' knife fight. The more Bitcoin crashes, the bloodier and the game gets.....best left to the Pros like yourself eh?

P.S. From November onwards, I found tarding Bitcoin very easy. I suspect the rule is that trading impulse wave = easy, but get the fuck out during corrective wave. Valuable lesson I have learned from tarding Bitcoin.

simple,

sit back , relax , enjoy the ride,

it may take a while,

don't worry about btc until difficulty starts dropping like a rock

as long as the network is running like it is now,  even if difficulty does not continue to go up (i suspect it will continue to rise)

it is bulletproof,

Very wise man, MatTheCat. Bitcoin is indeed looking like fucking shit right now, but bull-tards will never listen and will ride the "indestructible" Titanic down to the sea bed. Life boats are on deck being loaded as we speak, hold-tards I ask you, would you like to come onboard or wait it out in your cabins?

It is not the media's job to provide investment advice. It is the media's job to report facts which that have for the most part done over the lifetime of bitcoin. The only "time" when the media does not report facts about bitcoin accurately is when it is trying to describe something too technical for it's audience to understand.

Also generally speaking, interest in bitcoin has increased following the MSM reporting on bitcoin and it's volatility as there are many people who want to take risks.

No, it's been shown that the media coverage follows the price not vice versa.  Your right about it not being their job to provide advice, which is why the constant advice to NOT buy bitcoin was revealing of bias.

goxed
51% pool (easy came easy gone easy return)
crackers and governments and shit having 1200k coins(mtgox 200k, Ross Ulbricht 140k, crackers: 850k)
no new money
governments warning and banning
scam IPOs many including Ethereum and others
everyone is selling / spending
Dell / Expedia / Newegg / House dealer / etc are selling in real time
etc..

My advice is sell when the price is above $1000. It will get there, just hang on till next year.

To be fair, none of that has to do with "cracking" the technology.  For example, there must *always* be a mining monopoly (edit: by this I mean a majority, i.e. a monopoly held by 'good' miners), and I'm pretty sure governments seeking greater control over ideas and technologies isn't unique to Bitcoin.  Spending and selling are also pretty awesome because this simply translates into liquidity (and every sale has a buyer), though there are bound to be issues if exosystemic input can't match the output, i.e. fiat money going into the crypto market vastly differs from the amount exiting it.   The current inflation doesn't help in this regard.

Bitcoin is still an infant and it's trying to leverage itself on a global scale and adapt on the fly to the demands and needs of both citizens and governments in like 190 countries.  It's pretty hard not to acknowledge some remarkable resiliency and growth.  Although, on the other hand its infancy of course makes it prone to instability and -- quite frankly -- death due to being such a small market in a huge playing field.

The joke is on the OP - many of the Bitcoin $Fiat millionaires were guys who CPU mined for essentially free or they chucked in $5-$30 lunch money equivalent in 2009.

You can go in big on Bitcoin and risk being like the OP and baghold.  Or you can research the 500 alternates to Bitcoin, decide on the winners and diversify $10 - $1000 (your budget varies) on each one and wait 5 years.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=745710

just sell it all. it wont bother you any.

There're really no Bitcoin alternatives. In cryptocurrency, the first mover is the be all end all. The price of altcoins are all based on Bitcoin, and that pretty much says it all.

bolded for emphasis for those who say that "support and resistance is bullshit" hehe.

OP, sorry for your position. commonly held belief around here is that these here bitcorns are gonna be worth millions of dollars someday, so you got nothin to worry about! ;)

Ask yourself:

1) Why did I buy bitcoin
2) Did I invest only what I can afford to lose?

If the answer to 1) is "to make money quickly" then you understood nothing about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it is a disruptive technology in its early phase, and thus it is very risky and extremely volatile.

If the answer to 2) is "no" then you made a big mistake because of the above. Being Bitcoin extremely volatile and risky you will get emotional and thus you will make mistakes.

Furthermore, you seem to have made a poor analysis of Bitcoin past performance. You say "I thought bitcoin would have risen again as usual", omitting that Bitcoin lost 94% of its value in the Summer of 2011 (from $32 to $1.98) and 80% of its value in the Summer of 2013 (from $266 to $50). Just by giving a quick look to the historic Bitcoin price chart you should have asked yourself: "am I ready to see my investment losing 60%, 80% or even 90% of its fiat value without worrying, as this kind of price depression has usually happened to Bitcoin after sharp increases in value"?

Looking at the bright side, post like yours show quite clearly that we are close to the very bottom.

DO NOT SALE NOW.
Consider it a 5-year investment, and you should check the price when it is due several years later. The last drop is nothing but a little wave.

You should buy more. Unless you think it's going to $200?

I am surprised that not a single person here has given the standard advice of a financial advisor.

For the avoidance of doubt, the standard advice is to diversify your portfolio. That advice stands irrespective of whatever may have happened in the past to your investments. Just because they have gone down, does not mean you should not diversify.

Therefore the standard advice would be to sell a large proportion of your Bitcoin and to invest in other asset classes, in order to have a diversified portfolio.

That advice does not rely on a prediction of what the Bitcoin price will be in the future. It relies simply on the fact that YOU do not know what the Bitcoin price will be in the future (neither do I).

So when the price goes back up, they get them to buy back in because things are looking good for Bitcoin again? Genius.  ::)

Nope, because that would not be standard investment advice. It would break the portfolio diversification rule.
Do you remember your granny telling you "Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket"?
That stands whether your investments have gone up, down or sideways.

Investers should have patience or they end up loosing everything.

Calm down and wait for prices to hike.

I agree.  I think he should take this opp at 470 to reduce position by half.  Use the funds to diversify

Grandma always said "Math my boy, that's where the moneys at". Never once did she say the things you're saying.

She wouldn't believe it for a second, and probably would call you out on your terrible advice and bad portrayal of a financial advisor. Telling your clients to sell after they've had loses? Interesting theory, but terrible advice.

Because if you really had a mind, you'd tell them to buy more. It's simple math really.

You bought at 8, its now at 5. So when it goes back to 650,you've cut you losses in half. But lets try your way. buy at 8, sell at 5. buy something else at 8 and sell at 5...hmm. Doesn't seem quite right.

But I guess you need people like that to keep doing what you're doing.

Diversification merely decreases variance, but does not change expected return.  
Whether this is wise depends on how bad it would be to lose a lot of your money (which depends on stuff like how old you are, if you have kids, a stable job etc.).
Sometimes it's better not to have too many eggs in your basket so you can watch the eggs that you have closely enough (or avoid having to spend a disproportionate amount of time in a $100 "investment").

For sure it is a good default advice to follow, but it shouldn't always be the rule.

600 was the average in previous months. Do not worry, it will climb as BTC is expanding, but no one can tell how soon.

Kid is upset about investing 80% of his money for college... so we should advise him to invest his remaining 20% in something else? Yeah ok.

1) Go to https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd
2) Click on the "1w" button
3) Have a cup of tea.

860$ is very high buying price, you will have to wait for months to reach that.

There are good chances it will rise so don't worry.

Now we are close to the bottom so you should invest all of your remainings in btc and wait.

Why don't you make a cloud mine service yourself, it can be a profitable investment.

I'm confused.  How does "simple" math in any way indicate that you should buy more after falling from $800 to $500?  There's nothing about math that will tell you what the price will be in the future.  When you say things like "when it goes back to $650..." you're making the assumption that it's guaranteed to go up.  It's not.

Whether we're talking BTC or some other investment, cutting your losses can save you from losing everything.  It sounds that, based on what I just read, there is no good time to ever sell.  If the prices goes up, buy or just hold, and if the price drops buy more!

Under what circumstance would you, as a hypothetical financial advisor, advise someone to sell their investment?

Bitcoin isn't a standard investment.  It's a comm. tech. and it's a lot more like placing a bet that MP3s will take over the world, back in the 90s when nobody who was cool anyway had ever heard of MP3s because they had their cool Discmans.  

The potential far outweighs the risk IMO , beware of the opinionated "people" with a handful of posts.   They are often sock puppets who are trying to manipulate you in one way or another.

Keep looking at the fundamentals!  Has the network been hacked or something?  Are merchants abandoning it?  If all you care about is the price in the short term, your going to be disappointed since all of us knew from day 1 that it'll be a bumpy ride.

Just hold, by the end of the year it will be an entirely different scenario. Don't get stressed watching the price everyday, it will only make matters worse. Just have faith in yourself that you made a good investment and be patient. How does that saying go, first you must be right (as you are) but then you must sit tight, and that's the hard part.

Read this thread, perhaps you'll feel better about people panicking:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58634.0

First of all, you didn't "invest", you speculated.

Investing entails putting your money (hard-earned or otherwise) into something over which you have some control.

No, FUD-spamming internet forums doesn't count as having some control.

As somebody pointed out earlier, you haven't lost anything at all until you sell for less than you paid.  Your coins are worth exactly what you paid for them.

My coins are still only worth an average of $120 each. If I'd sold when the price dipped to $50 last summer, and people were clamoring about the coming capitulation that would take us sub-$30 and "no more triple digits in 2013", then I'd have lost money. but I didn't and the price soared to quadruple digits. If I'd sold then, I'd have made a handsome profit. I didn't so my coins are still only worth $120 per.

You can't assume that history will repeat itself but Bitcoin has never gone 2 years without realizing a massive price increase. The protocol is not broken. Venture capital keeps pouring in and infrastructure keeps being built.

My advice is to be patient and wait at least 2 years before doing anything except perhaps buying more. Don't be like one of those suckers who was talked into selling for less than $100 last summer by those preaching their own book, or those who sold for less than $5 in autumn of 2011.

It's false to say that someone hasn't lost anything if they're holding onto depreciating assets.  No, those coins are *not* currently worth the price he paid for them.  To see this, simply view your assets in terms of purchasing power.  The purchasing power of the coins he bought has decreased, so yes, he has incurred losses.

agreed

So many threads like this here.  So many people panicking and missing out on changing their lives!   Stop obsessing about the price and chill!  It will be all right... or it will be 0.    Deal with it.  8)

To answer you question, simply, where there's 0 chance of making that money back. He bought at a bad time, this is a bad time to sell. If he was really worried, he would have sold back in April. You don't ever sell when the market crashed.

now you should hold even more, if you don't want to lose your money

i got so enthusiastic about bitcoin that put my house savings plan fully into it. (it was sitting there for several years, nowhere enough to buy a house in the area i live and it paid 1% interest p.a.). i waited until after the peak of april 13 and shoved it all in at 130 . guess what happened: price went down again. it literally started to drop only an hour after my biggest purchase. hell, i did not expect that. it went down... i think it went as far down as 68.    i had fucked up - almost 50% loss.
i guess you know how this story continued.

if i recall how thin the news coverage, how small the vc money that poured in, how non-existent the infrastructure was - all compared to now - it makes me wonder why i was so enthusiastic.

i think you made the right decision.

Did you panic and sell when it dropped like that?

Exactly.  It will either do really well or it won't. 

The technology and uses are great and could be game changing.  If the game changes, the fiat value will increase greatly, but the key is that it is useful, regardless of the fiat price.

In the last almost 4 years, one hears the same thing - "it is crashing from $30" or "it is crashing from $3" or "it is crashing from $1, we won't ever see dollar parity again".

:-)

Thanks for sharing. Honestly I feel bad for taking your story to reinforce my belief that the value of bitcoin will ultimately rise because it's simple mathematics really, the less things are getting made the more valuable they become. Hope you didn't panic sell all your bitcoins and held some until end of 2013, you've made almost 10x profits

The statements you're making not only require you to tell the future, but they also contradict themselves.

There is no formula that can calculate the odds of your investment's future performance.  Saying things like "zero chance" and "bad time to sell" are intuitive guesses at best.

Here's a serious question for you -- How do you reconcile your suggestion that you only sell when there is "zero chance" of ROI with your suggestion that you "don't ever sell" during a market crash?  I'm asking to help show you that these ideas contradict each other and are mutually exclusive.  Either you sell when there actually is zero chance of ROI and thus break your rule of not selling in a down market, or you sell in a neutral or up market and thus break your rule of selling when there is at least some chance of ROI.

My advice would be to not boast arrogantly as if the advice you're giving doesn't depend upon supernatural, wizardly abilities.

Just hold on for now. If you sell now the loss will be actual. Take a break and stop looking at the prices.

did you seriously invest your life savings, enough to but a house, in bitcoin? I am 26 and my life savings were about 6000 euros more or less. That is another story. So are you very rich right now?

I agree, but the original poster clearly is not enjoying the variance. Clearly the variance is a huge concern to him.
If he's fretting this much over losing a bit under half the value, in purchasing power terms, then how would he feel if it fell to zero?
If he 'knew' that BTC is going to rise significantly, as many posters on here do, then sure he should stick with the one egg.
But he stated that he does not know the future price of BTC, which is critical here.
So diversifying, which decreases variance, is clearly the right strategy for him.

i was not able to fill up the house savings plan to an amount where i could nearly buy a house, so it was sitting there useless. it was indeed all i had. it was kind of risky. to me it felt like the once in a lifetime and very last chance to get out of the rat race. i am not rich now, i did not sell when it was over $ 1000 but i had to sell some part of my stash during 2014.  i wait for the run up after the very next run up - shall that ever happen i will retire and hail satoshi for the rest of my life...  ;)

no, i became fatalistic/stubborn and refused to eat the loss. but i have to admit that i did panic sell some btc during the silkroad flashcrash. worst decision ever, learned my lesson...

don't worry, i held almost all my stash. and yes, i WOULD have made 10x profits if i would have sold on top. hodlers hodl i guess...

edit: typo

Haha, what an imbecile. :D

Sell at a loss and don't come back.

I'm really glad you did. Sometimes we can get sucked in into all the negativity surrounding Bitcoin (no thanks to the forever bears) especially to those who are new into Bitcoin that it helps to know how things were back then and by keeping the faith it all comes out better than we can possibly imagine

It sounds like you did pretty well under the circumstances.  You didn't panic (for the most part) and your still here to tell the story, which is the main lesson you have to teach I think.  I wouldn't worry about not picking the exact top.  Unless your the one manipulating the market, it's impossible to predict the top or bottom. 

Hold your coins for a few years, bitcoin only grows even if it doesn't immediately show in the price or is on a pullback, don't give it up they will be more and more rare as time passes.

hey bud! : it's apparent most bitcoiners interests are self serving...are you different? Can we make a change for the better?  ::)   ...need your help!!!(pm me)

https://i.imgur.com/gd4xEDE.png

!!!!

This is definitely not a glitch! SELLLLLL!! /s

860$, is a very high price. I think you shouldn't sell it panicing. Bitcoins is future and prices will surely rise.

Just wait for an year or so.

Takes time for people to accept trading and spending bitcoin on these levels, when enough do so and even more are willing to enter the market the price will rise almost guaranteed.
Even if another pullback to $400 comes just hold or buy extra. The odds for bitcoin to challenge the alltime high are very good, until it breaks out even higher. But then people need to get used to those levels again for awhile, imagine you will be able to buy a decent car for 1 or 2 bitcoins or a house for 25 bitcoins  :D

tl;dr why didn't you buy at $450?

What do you think is going to happen if all the home miner/ hobbiest like myself just can't mine anymore for whatever reason? (too hot, too expensive, too noisy, wife bitching, etc, etc, etc)

Your going to see more buyers and sellers, especially once the block reward halves again.

And seeing things like Newegg.com selling a PS4 for $80 off if you use bitcoins, is great too. It's like being in a club with great discounts. The more people that adopt bitcoin, I'm sure the less you're going to see things like those deals.

But in the mean time, let's do this!

New title for this thread: what should I do, I invested alot and haven't invested since..

OP, I just read your post history:

"I keep all bitcoin in bitstamp cause I trust them"

Now this, may not be a good idea.

Well, maybe if you are so technically illiterate that you would totally screw up holding them yourself. But historically, Bitcoin exchanges can and do go bust.

As others have said - you don't have any bitcoin, you have an IOU for bitcoin.

Do *not* keep your "investment" on an exchange!  That is asking for trouble!   Your far better off with a paper wallet, or even an excellent pass phrase and the Qt wallet (backed up many times of course!).

I would say there's a better chance that you'll get screwed over by the exchange in some way than there is that your investment will tank long term...

:D..I'm waiting for the right opportunity...

by the way, I am 28 yo I am not rich and I invested a lot of my savings, especially I bought a lot of LITECOIN....f**k  :'( :'(

Should not invest what you are not willing to lose it all.

Would suggest you to reduce the risk by selling and only holding what you are willing to lose.

Why Litecoin? You should have focused on Bitcoin, Litecoin is a clone with no added value to the original.

:'( :'(  I bought before, but unexpectedly it continued to depreciate, I was reluctant to sell at a low price, now I have about 1000 litecoins.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LGfZmcoFPwk/UEujdLt5l1I/AAAAAAAAFCY/xoToE0AhiQk/s400/crying-kid-250x300.jpg

My recommendation is for newbies to stick to Bitcoin - alts, especially useless BTC clones like LTC (and its further clones), are just pure gambling and/or pump&dump schemes. Not a wise investment at all, unless you already own BTC and you just want to gamble a little.

it's too late :-\

You should sell your litecoins now it's actually overvalued at the moment. How much did you buy your ltcs at btw?

25 dollars :'( ...

I will not say more, I’m feeling worse with more words, I don’t know whether to sell or hold for a long time, in a word, I'm waiting for a chance...

Doesn't matter when he bought. Price dropped way more than 60% this month alone. Doubt the extra 10-20% difference make no different to ltc investors.

I know people who invested a lot into GPU mining when ltc peaked at around 45. They are having hard time selling the gpu now.

Damn I ignored more people in this thread than in Wall observer. Stay invested lol.

You could wait till btc rises then litecoin may follow suit, or it may not. But if btc rises then you would've missed the btc boat if you haven't bought into btc when the price is low. It's hard but it's better to offload any altcoins you have and just get into btc solely.

Okay. I understand. Thanks very much.... :)

In any case if you sell lower than you bought, you lose. Whether you believe in Bitcoin or not doesn't matter. If you sell now, you definitely lose. If you hold now, you have 2 options open - either you lose or you gain.

Choice is clear. Do not sell until Bitcoin rises to the prices you bought them for.

Today is a good day to sell LTC all out and never look back again.

Fundamentally speaking, LTC future won't be any different than today or a month ago.

Why? You can say the same about BTC then?


I got plenty of LTC, bought more at ~$4... not worried at all

same could be said for owners of bitcoin when they bought them at $5. or $12. or $48. or $120. or $266. or $330. or even $450.

Nonsense. LTC is a useless clone of Bitcoin, which only "added value" compared to Bitcoin was a different hashing algorithm (Scrypt) that was supposed to be ASIC resistant (no ASIC = no mining centralization). Nowadays we have Scrypt ASICs, thus Litecoin is completely useless.

There's no reason to hold LTC other than trying to sell at a premium to a "greater fool".

Yeah I don't agree with you, at all,  but there is no point debating.. we'll just wait and see

You have to wait a lot, probably more than a year to get btc hit even 800 dollar mark. Don't make mistake of selling it low. Have faith.

remember the fundamentals

Scarce
Durable
Portable
Divisible
Impossible to counterfeit
Fungible ( any 1 BTC has the same value as any other )
Easy to keep safe ( contrary to popular belief, it easy to print out a paper wallet...)


if this is worth less than 525$ to you, then get out now.

That applies to all altcoins. Basically the game of altcoins is, be the early adopters in to generate insane amount of coins, bet on it to rise in value then sell all and move on to the next new altcoin. No altcoins can overtake the first mover that is Bitcoin, no matter how better they are than Bitcoin, because the way cryptocurrency works is that you can never generate more early than you are late, it's what make cryptocurrency deflationary and hence, give them value

I completely agree. I had a friend ask me about litecoin about a year ago. I told him it was pointless. It's even more pointless now that Scrypt ASICs exist. It's on par with Dogecoin, except it doesn't have the fun aspect and great marketing. I can't imagine it gains value in any significant way.

To OP, keep holding. The worst is either over, or will be over soon. Don't sell the bottom.

Do you think something like "popular" or "desirable" (not to be confused with scarce) should be considered as a requirement of good money?  Otherwise, how would you arrive at different conclusions for different alt-coins?   For example, BTC and DOGE have similar technical properties but BTC is worth more to me than DOGE because it's more popular and others believe it is more valuable, thus I'd rather get out of DOGE.

Referring to bolded section, what makes you reach the conclusion that scrypt ASICS make LTC "more pointless?"  I see scrypt ASICs as a great thing for the LTC network (e.g. greater network security, greater community investment, etc.).  I think that as SHA-256 is monopolized by BTC, every other decent mining algorithm will also become monopolized.  LTC has always been a dominant player among scrypt coins, and although it's seen some heavy competition from other coins like DOGE, I don't see scrypt or LTC going away anytime soon.  However, I would concede that, in general, the momentum behind LTC has been rather grim if you exclude the rallying we've seen over the past 48 hours.

One thing that I think severely limits LTC, however, is that while its 2.5 minute confirmation times make it more practical for in-person transactions (i.e. because 1 confirmation is infinitely better than 0 confirmations), I think this is still too slow.  That's one reason why I remain skeptical about LTC's future growth potential.

I would say hold. The real kick should come from the Winklevoss ETF - that will bring in a new class of investors. Some people and institutions see the value but want someone else to do the technical / legal hassle for them.

I'm pretty the ETF will get approved. When it does, I would conservatively say the price will double within weeks, if not days. There will literally be a tsunami of demand and new investment.

Why do you say that?  The Wink ETF, IIRC, is to be backed by the coins they already own.  They'll have to secure $105MM in investment before there is further demand for coin.

I think many of us expect market manipulation when the usual market manipulators get involved.    I also think ETFs have been responsible for bubbles (and crashes) in the past in other commodities markets (like platinum for example), so it's not unreasonable to expect the same when it comes to Bitcoin.  The ETF is supposed to track the commodity, but the reverse ends up happening.

That's a seemingly fair assessment.  The only consideration to remember is the historics you've pointed out surround true commodities, ones that people know and understand.  Bitcoin is a little different in that regard, but I'll conceed that for the ETF participants it may not matter what exactly backs the ETF, as long as they can profitably trade it.

you said it, scrypt make it monopolized and centralized, how is that good by any mean? if scrypt were not so damn fast in reaching a better hash they could have been good to be honest, but right now they are bad very bad, they are a run for who has more money

No hashrate of any coin is monopolized. There is no law preventing you or anyone else from inventing a newer, faster ASIC.

I think if you wait 1 year the bitcoin price will be 1200$ per btc

Write the money off, all of it. Every time you buy anything thats what you should do.

Once you have done that you will be able to see clearly again. You will see that right now you have some bitcoin. It's up to you to decide how you feel about that bitcoin, but fixating on purchase price will only ever cloud your judgement.

The market price is what people are prepared to pay you *right now* for your bitcoin, if you think they are worth less than market price then sell, if you think they are worth more than market price you should buy more!

Market price is quite often the worst indicator of how much something is worth.

I don't believe that you understand how mining works.  There's nothing about any mining algorithm whether it's scrypt, SHA-256, x11, etc. that implicitly says anything about monopolies or centralization.  There's also nothing about ASICs that say anything about this, either.

When I say that Bitcoin has a monopoly over SHA-256, I simply mean that it is by several orders of magnitude a more popular coin to mine than any other SHA-256 coin.  I'm not talking about some group controlling or monopolizing a coin itself.   This is the inevitable result of competition.

As far as ASICs go, of course you could have a millionaire or billionaire or a large corporation/government spend tons of money on new ASIC mining equipment to try to gain a majority share of network power, but the same is true for any other mining algorithm for which ASICs have not yet been developed.  The only difference is that ASICs are simply more efficient and less wasteful of energy and resources, and so this is purely a benefit to the network in that you get more network security per dollar invested. 

Again, LTC being a scrypt coin and capable of being mined by scrypt ASICs in and of itself has nothing to do with monopolization or centralization.

LTC was built in order to be an "ASIC resistant" coin. This is important because a coin that can be mined on commodity hardware (CPUs, GPUs and even FPGAs) is inherently more resistant to centralization.

In any case "ASIC resistant" seems a very difficult goal (if possible at all) to achieve, and it was clear that Scrypt was not "ASIC resitant" at all. The Litecoin value proposal has always been dubious, despite of it being an interesting (and probably necessary) experiment.

Now that Scrypt ASIC are in the wild and that its been proven that being x4 faster and having a x4 monetary base compared to BTC has a negligible impact on usability it becomes clear that there is nothing significant that LTC can offer us.

The LTC/USD value will likely just piggyback the Bitcoin value. The LTC/BTC value might grow at some point, but just because at this stage an incredibly big part of the market doesn't really understand crypto and acts in an extremely irrational way.

Is that really true?  LTC's primary purpose was to be ASIC resistant?  How the heck did I miss that?  I really find that hard to believe since it's a far stretch of the imagination to call something "ASIC resistant" just because an ASIC hasn't been fabricated for that purpose yet.  It seems *very* shortsighted (unless you're an LTC dev and wanted to make a quick buck).

I was under the impression that LTC, aside from making some superficial changes to the total supply and confirmation times, was intended to  be more of a BTC failsafe, i.e. if one network fails then we have another.  I didn't realize ASIC resistance was even a consideration, but I did assume that the fact that people could still reasonably use CPUs to mine LTC when it was introduced was one of the reasons scrypt was chosen as the mining algorithm.

The whole point of LTC is "ASIC resistance". Someone invented the LTC and instantly get huge support from miners because profit for bitcoin was switching from GPU miner to ASIC manufacture.

The development team did a half ass job when it come to infrastructure and marketing. There is no public wallet service for LTC I know of and there are few merchants accept LTC for payment.

The coin will probably fade away unless someone step in to build better infra or do better marketing.

There was a proposal to hard fork LTC in order to move it to X11 algo, which is ASIC-resistant at the moment. However the community denied the proposal and it never happened.

https://bitcointa.lk/threads/ann-litecoin-ltc-x11-hardfork-at-block-564-480.291272/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=549572.0

Here's my advice.

Go ask your bank for a loan. Then open as many accounts as possible at various banks, and arrange as big an overdraft as they are willing to give you. Apply for as many credit cards as possible. Basically, borrow as much money as you possibly can. Then open an account with Bitfinex, and put all the money up as margin for a leveraged long position. Hopefully the price will go up and you'll make lots of money.

You're welcome.


Disclaimer: please don't actually do this.

I'm pretty sure that when LTC was first released there was no GPU miner at the time.  I was around then, so I *should* know, especially since I was CPU mining LTC at the time, but specific details of everything else are a bit fuzzy.  Sorry.  BTC-bug bit me.

The dev team started off fantastically and so did the community.  Somewhere along the line when other alt-coins hit and gained traction, LTC began to lose some ground.

I still don't believe that the whole point of LTC is ASIC resistance.  Here's the original Litecoin announcement thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.0)

Basically, it states it wanted to be Bitcoin what silver is to gold, a "real alternative currency similar to Bitcoin."  By the way, there were definitely no Bitcoin ASICs in 2011.

What if Bitfinex turn gox?

Is there any protection for customer who put money on bitfinex?

This is wrong on so many levels. What stops people to have big DCs rooms filled with PCs and FPGAs? Absolutely nothing. Maybe the lack of money, but it's still doable. And while you seem to have a decentralize mining you lose a lot more on security because the network is very vulnerable when the total power is low.


What customer protection? People are bashing and hating the BitLicense every day!

Just hold and don't check the price everyday.

It will just distract you from short term fluctuation and create unnecessary doubt.

Nothing stops a malicious entity to have big DCs rooms filled with PCs and FPGAs, but if a coin is mined only on commodity hardware the whole world can fire back just by plugging in hardware readily available everywhere. With ASICs you could very well have a global entity like Intel or AMD having exclusive access to mining technology which could effectively squeeze out the rest of the market.

Anyhow I do agree that ASIC resistance is probably a pipe dream, I also agree that ASICs have their positive side in terms of total hash rate and thus network security. I guess the crypto-currency scene will just have to handle the mining ecosystem as it is and that the market *might* adjust itself by having the right incentives (a single entity monopolizing hashrate will probably just kill the investment they did to reach a majority of the network by casting a shadow on BTCs security).


The value proposals of LTC, compared to BTC:

• confirmation time: x4 faster
• monetary base: x4
• hashing algorithm: Scrypt instead of SHA-256

I guess we all agree that the increase in monetary base and the decrease on confirmation times are superficial changes that have a negligible effect on usability. Being it "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" is just a pretty stupid and empty marketing claim. The "real thing" is supposed to be the different hashing algorithm. It's very well documented that when and if SHA-256 is broken Bitcoin would be able to quickly switch hashing algorithm, so LTC being "a failsafe" sounds pretty pointless... But there you have the problems of ASICs - yep, you can change hashing algorithm very quickly, but then you would render the whole mining infrastructure unusable because its composed by machines that can ONLY mine SHA-256, which in case of algorithm switching would pose a huge problem because the security of the network would be jeopardized. That's why the only real point of LTC was supposed to be ASIC resistance, which nevertheless was never taken seriously by anybody with an average understanding of crypto.

LTC just has the very same fundamental characteristics of Bitcoin (both positive and negative aspects), I do appreciate it as a necessary experiment, but now it's just become a useless clone.

Disclaimer: I do hold LTC bought in Februrary 2013, but I will probably unload them during the next BTC run-up, just because during a maniac market LTC will probably appreciate slightly against BTC because some noobs will prefer to buy into LTC "because its cheaper".

the money prevent me, this mean it monopolized, it's like saying that microsoft don't have the monopoly on OS unit sold, because you can sell more if you had more money to make a company bigger than them

The reason I posted the original Litecoin announcement thread is to show you exactly why the devs created Litecoin.  Again, it has nothing to do with being ASIC resistant.  You made that up.

Again:
- The devs clearly state it was intended to be similar to BTC, and to be to BTC what silver is to gold.
- No ASICs were in development at that time, so ASIC resistance was a total non-issue.
- Again, claiming LTC was designed to be ASIC resistant simply because it utilizes a different mining algorithm is very stupid, because that's equating ASIC resistance to the current lack of ASIC technology suited for that specific purpose.  Quit making things up.
- By your logic, you might as well say LTC was supposed to be GPU resistant because there was no GPU scrypt miner at the time.  See how absurd this idea is?

Oh come on, that's like saying rich people have a monopoly over Ferraris and Lamborghinis.  It's pretty obvious that people with more money can buy more.  It doesn't matter if it's ASICs, GPUs, FPGAs, CPUs, etc.  You seem to be butchering the term 'monopoly.'

LTC users pretty much coined the term "ASIC resistant" .... you cant tell me this wasn't a selling point.

Maybe later down the road when ASICs became a reality, but it certainly wasn't an initial selling point.  And like you said, it was coined by the users.  It wasn't stated by the devs as an initial or primary consideration.

Sell your kidney and buy some more!

I'm sorry your investment in bitcoins is down.  I imagine several people are in a similar situation. 

I do not think this is the end of bitcoin.  The key thing is do you need the cash now or can you afford to hold the coins?  If you need your national currency back now, then sure, sell, take the loss, and move on.  It sucks, but it's not like you've been wiped out, investors in many stocks see far worse losses than you've incurred.

If you don't need the cash then by all means, I'd hang on to it for awhile longer.  Though I admit that takes a lot of patience as it sucks to be continually reminded of what looks like a mistake everytime you see the bitcoin price.

A good rule on any investment is remembering why you bought it.  If that reason is still true, then keep it, if not, sell it and move on.

Good Luck!

People should know bitcoin isn't an investment geared toward people with low risk.

If they don't have the stomach for 70-80% fluctuation, they should probably sell it now and do something else with the money.

You should calm down and cost average whatever you have left.

I agree with cost averaging. Let's say you invested $3000 into 100 LTC at $30 each. Another $3000 today at $5.50 = an additional 545 LTC. That brings you up to 645 at $6000 and now you're down $9.3. Like I said, significantly! If crypto turns around and starts a new up trend, you'll be looking at significant gains as opposed to looking to break even. But, of course, this doesn't come without the risk of losing everything if crypto dies off completely...

If you need to know one thing about cryptocurrency, the one with the first mover advantage will always have the highest value. All others that follow can only be based on the first mover. So it's better to just concentrate on the first mover that is Bictoin, which is the one that created the whole new concept of cryptocurrency. Sure you can probably gain a little by dabbling into altcoins provided you know when to offload them at their peak but all altcoins are based on the first mover, Bitcoin

It seems that the Op invested money he can't afford to lose.

Forget about those that say you didn't lose anything, because you didn't sell the bitcoins. You lost that money. Maybe you can recover it, maybe you will lose more.

Faced with uncertain scenarios, where the price can go up or down, but on a bearish trend, better limit your loses and sell a part of your holdings. Saving them to go back in at a much lower price, if the prices keep going down.

This is the worst advice in this thread.

Average down in the long run rarely make anyone money. It only take one bad event to wipe your entire capital.

Hold on to it, don't sell, trade or anything. It might hit $1,000 soon. Just need the right bull run.

It's about limiting your losses. Your assumptions are based on the "bad event" that could never happen. If you invest going on the assumption that you're going to have a bad event, then you're doing it wrong.

Besides with all the reset ups and downs that BTCbitcoinBTC has been going through lately, you could have made quite a bit of fiat. It's really not that hard.

Someone that averages down is someone that got it wrong once and persists on doing the same thing, only at a lower price. It's someone that is fighting the trend.

Sometimes, it works. But when it goes really wrong, the negative consequences will waste all the small profits or avoided losses you made using this technique.

somebody must be the person who bought when it was over 1000 $

so, someone became uncredible happy and rich and somebody lost all his money

i can give you a secret tip, sell all your bitcoins and buy sexcoin, now is cheap, may be become a milionaire

Please don't listen to him, sexcoin is another pump and dump coin..

You see, if you just held on like I said, you wouldn't have been so mad at yourself.

Hang on, Bitcoin will never fail you :)

I would say that in about 90% of the trades on bitcoin, the seller is selling not because he needs the money, but because he thinks bitcoin is going down.

The same can be said about the buyers: most of them buy not to use bitcoins, but as a mean of investment. In other words, they believe bitcoin is going up.

Therefore, in about 90% of the trades, there is always a sucker and a winner. At least on the short-run, they can't be both right. Even in the long run, the buyer might make money, but he was a sucker on the short-run, if he could bought it cheaper.

Of course, we can be suckers all the time, because we didn't sell on the perfect moment, and still end up rich. It's just a matter to be sucker just on a small degree.

Hold your bitcoin until it rise again. It shouldn't be too long..

Is there any way you can purchase more while the price is lower? that way your cost average will be lower, so instead of your average being in the 700's you possibly could get it in the low 600s or lower.. then if you want out, and you can get to your  break even point, you will be okay...

I feel your pain.. But like others have said, you haven't lost anything until you sell. So, dont.. it will recover.

The guys who mentioned the fundamentals are on the right track. Print a paper wallet. Dig ditches to cover your interim expenses. Don't sell the Bitcoin.

Mark (IndiaMikeZulu), Australia

The fundamentals are on right track.

How many project have so many people working on the same goal at the same time all over the world? One (bitcoin).

Hold the bitcoin you already bought and buy more since its cheap now, it also lower your average price :)

Just sit and wait, man, just sit and wait.

SEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLL!

Hold and buy.

Sell Bitcoin is stupid.

^^ Exactly, every selling order now is a lossing order in 10 years.

Wait it out, the good thing is you are 26 years old you say it like a negative hehe.  Convert that young energy into some extra money until bitcoin goes to the moon.

You should go all in Monero. You will double number of your BTC in a month.

Provide detailed fundamental and technical analysis for that claim or are rendered an idiot.

Time will tell which of you is the idiot.

 Given that neither can form a complete sentence, I would suggest we do not require time to make that determination.

Lmao

Just wait for a decade and you'll be rich. Live on the streets meanwhile.

Hold and buy more. Lowering down your average price

You said you can live with it so have balls and hold, as long as you can eat and drink and have a place, it will be worth it at the end.

i heard about dogecoin and sexcoin. It's similar to bitcoin, but make much profit. I invest some money and now waiting.

interesting nick  ;D

That logic betrays itself surely, if in a month he intends to once again use the bitcoin then why would he ever sell to begin with.   Monero would need to be superior for at least that month of use in order to be worth a purchase to begin with.    Seems to rely on the greater fool theory and if he gambles for a month he could gain.  The point is if in a months time,  if that bitcoin is worth having then the current price should accumulate greater use this month and the following months and price will recover.
  We have expression of much doubt and still the fallout of mtgox or similar restrictions to bitcoin this year.  His main thoughts should be if Bitcoin can surpass such failings and succeed in holding value longer term, the market price is really secondary to that.

  The main thing is whether the trend for BTC is up or down, over the years we have a trend up and so decide if that trend was valid or hype, a one off event or competition from Monero or other various currencies now makes BTC redundant

OP, if it helps any I'll give you my 2 Satoshi.

I have been in since ~$15, I have seen two crashes and made a decent but small profit. My portfolio is stupidly heavy on the bitcoin side. I barely have any money and my bitcoins are basically more than I could earn in 15 years of savings. I want a small farm so bad that I would sell my liver to get it.

If bitcoin tanks I can recover but my life will never be the same. I won't die but I will be... Upset.

I believe that the market will go up. Unless some major catastrophe happens bitcoin will increase in value within the next few years. Despite the aforementioned worries, I don't worry about it anymore. I don't care about the market fluctuations, I just watch for what I know will be the rise or fall of bitcoin.

If you can't take it, you have too much skin in the game. Take some out, you'll sleep better.

The other day... I was walking to a local pizza parlor. In front there were some of those free news stand. I read really fast so I skimmed all the covers as I walked by. I took about 4 more steps and stopped.

WTF#$%!! #?!!?

There in the news stand was a full color Ybitcoin magazine. I started yelling at the news stand and my gf thought I lost it. I opened it up to take one and I had another shock. THE ONE IN THE WINDOW WAS THE LAST ONE! I took it because I was so excited.

I don't even know how to convey to you how much this moment changed my perceptions about how much bitcoin acceptance has progressed. I just live in a medium sized town and people are cleaning out the free literature. No one even reads the damn newspaper which you have to pay for!

So sell off some of your coins so you can sleep better. The rest are exactly where they should be. I wish you luck my comrade.