Bitcoin Forum

     I have been asking myself this.

     I really don't plan to sell mine unless a mad frenzy occurs again, and only if I were to be certain the market would relax again. I could also envision myself selling my coins were I to fall into a tough financial situation. Other than that, my BTC are here to stay. Even taking into account the price volatility, I still consider bitcoin to be a better and more convenient "store of value" than just about anything else.

     What about you? We are all in in this for different reasons. What would cause you to sell your coins?

     I don't consider myself a crackpot. Austrian economics bother me; blow-hard libertarianism bothers me even more. I realize that the bitcoin "community" is ridiculed from time to time for being so viciously loyal to its namesake currency and its dream of global economic upheaval. Generally, I am cautious to associate myself with anything that emits a crackpot-esque vibe. Still, even after the ridiculous amount time I have spent on this forum, I have yet to discover any reason why bitcoin could necessarily not be the currency of our grandchildren. So thus far, I'm sold. And I'm here for the long haul.

When trading against volatility, I sometimes sell everything a few times a day.


Several times, I've been without any coins waiting for the price to come back down.  And waiting.   and waiting ...     before eventually giving in and buying back at a price higher than where I sold at.

Day trading is so tempting to me. But I just can't bring myself to do it.

John the dong, beautiful sig. I wish I were assigned a personalized slogan.

Tell Coinabul that.  :P

After the fees, I sometimes end up far worse then I started.  :'(

I'd sell of all my bitcoins in the event that the price spikes to something crazy in one day like the $30 spike, only to buy them back later.  Anytime I try to do any day trading I lose out though.


I agree with the "crackpot-esque" bit.  I don't buy into any of the hype that BTC will replace USD, or that USD will collapse anytime soon. I DO believe that bitcoin fills a gap in the Internet and has a ton of potential.  I don't see any reason why BTC cannot exist side-by-side with USD for the next 100 years and I'm very excited about the possibilities for BTC.

I totally agree. At this point, bitcoin seems to be the solution for great micropayment conundrum. However, this may change in the future, as miners begin to depend more and more on transaction fees.

I would never sell everything, but I might sell half if:
-Pirate defaults
-A miner gets 50% of the total hashrate
-Extremely bad major news coverage (CNN claims "Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme")

If a beautiful woman asked me to.
If I was threatened at gunpoint.
If such an action would save the world from obliteration.
Nope, can't think of a good reason.

I suck at trading. Every time I trade I loose so no more trading for me. I just buy at market price what ever the price is. The value of BTC is going to go up up up over the long hall so I just need to suck it in, cause I just suck!

I'm stacking BTC for my retirement  ;D

Non Public information that would have an effect on BTC Price.
SR Shutdown,SHA-256 Weakness,etc

Ah, great point. I'd have to agree.

I sold all my btc just last month. I've gotten hold of a few bitcoins since then, but I will probably sell all of them again if someone's willing to buy them all at a price greater than I bought them.

Before, I made money by holding on to the coins. Now I'm trying to see what happens if I keep moving them.

Then reality is what bothers you. I bet you will end up selling all your bitcoins for the wrong reasons.  ;)

Really? Sell on pirate default? It seems to me that a pirate default reveals there to be fewer coins that previously though and should push the price up. Maybe moreso if he first struggles to buy the coins he owes.

I'd be pretty damned concerned if BFL or similar said "actually, we're going to keep these and mine" and then the difficulty trippled. Or if double spends past 1 confirm became common. I'd probably have to sell a good chunk.

CNN claims "Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme" doesn't scare me at all. Other media will love to ridicule them and demonstrate the differences. Plus so few people who are holding coin will believe. And even if only a small percent of non-holders figure it out and become holders that will be a huge number compared to current holders. If I had free cash I might buy on a story like that. Not to mention that a story like that doesn't come out of the blue and probably indicates increase top-level concern about bitcoin proliferation.

The first time that happened I didn't sell (Yay me!)

The second time that happened I didn't sell (Yay me!)

The third time that happened I didn't sell (Boo!)

Never. Even if I knew the entire system was about to fail, I'd still keep 1 BTC.

Let me guess because it keeps you warm at night?

like scrooge mcduck and his #1 dime. :D

Well, considering all the heat that went into its production... ;)

For me, "day trading" bitcoin means buying bitcoin every day. ;D

There is a stack of bitcoin Which I will never sell, except I need the money to save my and other important family members' life.

I wont sell all never, I always would leave one or couple.
If It will be stabilized situation and bitcoin already really high in value (counting in thousands more than now)
and so common in use that i will be payed for my work in bitcoin and I wont have nothing more currency than bitcoin I will sell it for food newspaper etc. bot only some reasonably part of my supply, not to spend everything for example if I'm 30 years old and I assume that I would live 120 years it gives 90 years of living I can spend 1/90 part of my all bitcoins every year (if price is very high and quite stable)
So if I have 90BTC now I could spend about 1 BTC a year.
So to live with that there should be 1BTC about 12000$ value, :)

My personal approximation is BTC or other universal currency will get about 420000$ per BTC someday  (minimum) :)
It comes from daily trading volume in BTC and Forex.
Which I have described in other topic.

Selling everything is not in my plans regardless of what happens but I would sell a significant amount in certain scenarios. One is that there is a significant technical threat with the cryptography or with the mining network. Other one is legal problems. If Bitcoin is deemed illegal, it would not be good in my book since I only care about Bitcoin's larger mainstream potential. I don't use it for illegal uses so that would be the end for me. I would save some in case there is some unlikely anarchist revolution in the world so that the illegality is irrelevant. I would also sell a significant portion if I think there is a large speculative bubble with the price.

Other than that, I'm probably not selling much unless I have direct need for fiat purchasing power. Actually sold some recently simply because I needed the money. The ideal would be that I don't have to sell much coins at all and that I'd be able to turn them into real purchasing power (money) without exchanging to fiat. Spending them directly when needed, that is. I believe that will become a more realistic option once Bitcoin grows and its acceptance is larger.

As for the other potential "issues" in this thread, I deem those as non-issues. CNN saying Bitcoin is a ponzi would be ridiculous since it doesn't qualify as a ponzi. They can certainly do that and it might cause a short term drop in Bitcoin's price but most likely in the long run it would be positive news. As for pirate's fund, I don't care about that either way. It's largely irrelevant in the long run.

I'm not one to gamble on short term dips (to sell and buy back), I do that very rarely. Not counting that out if I smell a really good opportunity but lately I've just been concentrating on working on Bitcoin services and building my Bitcoin startup company. Speculative trading is not what I consider a productive activity.

That day, may arrive sooner than most of us think.  Here is the historical record on life cycle of hash algo's.
http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html

Let us hope people see the day a long time ahead of time & upgrade the bitcoin protocol with plenty of time to spare.

In all likelyhood we could switch to a new hashing algo before any real damage were done.  Remember, numerous weaknesses were found in MD5.  granted MD5 wasn't broken outright, but several algo weaknesses found significantly lowered the strength from 128 bit to something like 112 bit.  The world abandoned MD5 for anything critical and everything was fine.  Sha256, likely has no silver bullet style weakness.  At worst I think one day we wake up and some dude found a big prime common factor or somehting and the crypto strength comes into question.  On day 1 of the exploit Gavin patches to a new algo.

I would sell when, and if i was convinced there was something better... (spinkles Litecoin troll repellent)

Couple of counterpoints.

1) Markets trade on perception not reality.  If every single new channel, online blog, and tech site is gabbering nonstop about SHA-256 being fundamentally flawed it is going to affect the market.

2) If you think "Gavin" or any Bitcoin developer is going to patch the core algorithm of the network in 1 day you must be in some alternate universe.  Maybe within 1 month if the flaw is 0-day critical.  I would say more like 3-4 months if the flaw a threat but not immediately useful as an attack.  Have you seen how changes in Bitcoin protocol have taken in the past and these were more like tinkering around the edges.  Replacing SHA-256 with an alternate hash would be ripping the heart of the protocol out.

Nobody said "SHA-256 theoretical flaw = bitcoin insta-dies".  However to think it wouldn't be bearish on price is kinda short sighted.

I'm sure there would be more pressing issues then Bitcoin if the SHA-2 family is broken or a 0-day exploit is found. ;) (at least, for now)

Don't. It's a negative–sum game, and the only winner is the exchange. Every dollar won by one trader comes out of the pocket of another.

For safe profits, try starting a Bitcoin business, or do some arbitraging.

I can only think of 2 reasons that might get me to do it.

1. i have enough value in bitcoins to buy a house.
2. Women

I have one word for you: Neutersol

It's good to hoard, that is BTC made for

So far, the network is maintained by the people mining coins, after all the coins were mined, there will be problem to maintain the block chain, the transaction time will dramatically increase, so I anticipate some time later a change to the code is unavoidable, if BTC is going to survive for the long run

The coins will never be all mined.  The reward will just keep dropping. 

The creation of new bitcoins will stop when the block subsidy drops from 0.00000001 to 0.00000000. The number of bitcoins will be exactly 20999999.97690000. This will happen sometime around the year 2140.

I don't see selling them all unless:

Another block-chain or < insert superior technology > evolved to the point where my analysis showed it would be superior for some reason. (Security or other benefits - although given the collective hashing power of the current network, this is very remote.)

The price denominated in Chinese Yuan was so superior I could live the rest of my life without having to worry about money at all. (What? You think the dollar is going to be a world reserve currency forever?)

And even then, I'd keep a core position on... So no, I don't see me getting 'out' of bitcoin, ever.