Hey mindrust, dude, likely you have been in bitcoin as long as me, since your bitcoin talk account was created around the time that I made my first bitcoin purchase in late 2013.

In other words, you have had around 4.5 years to establish a decently "loaded" bitcoin position, no?  That should be a sufficient amount of time to feel that you have established a "loaded enough" position, no?  

What be taking you so long?   Can't we go up, yet?  

The whole bitcoin community should not be waiting for you to get sufficiently on board, correct?  

If so, why?

Thanks for reposting that gif.  I think that it was generated around February-ish, and sometimes the page gets stuck..... so it is good to go to the source in order that the page does not get stuck...

https://steemitimages.com/DQmPNGT2W6hkD5eEh4c7CMGEEHq2siCLSke75g11YTfEGL5/Bitcoin-Market-Cycle.gif

I am still having some difficulties relating to some of you other bitcoin bulls. 

Sure, I consider myself a bitcoin bull.  What else could I be?  Especially, similar to several of you in this thread (even those with whom I have vigorous disagreements), I continue to appreciate that bitcoin remains the ONLY real crypto that provides decentralized sound money, and the various solutions that develop along the way, through bitcoin, continue to strengthen it's foundation rather than getting distracted into serving as some kind of scam... and for those kinds of reasons, bitcoin remains a threat to traditional financial institutions that are going to have to join rather than to fight - largely based on Gresham's law in which good money is going to flow into the good assets, and so far, the strongest such asset remains bitcoin.

Yet, my price perspective remains o.k., even with these current prices in the $6k to $7,500 arena, and the seeming ongoing tests of price support in the lower ends of the range. 

In the end, I am thinking that I would still be o.k. with BTC prices above $2k, but of course the lower the BTC price goes, then there are needs to reassess the situation, and to consider that the bear market is stronger and longer than what was expected.  Actually on the way down from $19,666, I continued to believe that the blow off top bull run was not over; however, the longer that this current correction lasts, the more I become resigned to the possibility that this current correction is going to last longer and the more I become resigned to the possibility that it is going to take more energy, steam and buying power to get the trend to go back up and for the bull run to continue.

Sure, going down in price causes me to recognize that I am NOT as rich as I would have been with higher BTC prices, and I "could have" taken more BTC off the table on the way up.. but int he end, it remains water under the bridge and a BIG SO FUCKING WHAT? because in the end, an investment strategy of buying on the way down and selling on the way up remains a sound strategy that does not need to be changed, just continued considerations about how much to shave off of the top on the way up in order to continue to increase BTC holdings (measuring wealth in BTC holdings rather than measuring in that asset that we refer to as "value losing fiat").

In other words, I believe that I continue to be in a similar position to most of us who were in the BTC scene before 2017, and even if we made mistakes, largely our average cost per BTC remain in the 3 digits (below $1k), and surelty there are some longer term holders/traders who have accomplished trading methods that either put them in the two digits (below $100) or even quite low in the 3 digits. 

Another possibility, for several of us, could be to engage in a  kind of trickery in accounting and to cash out of BTC the amount that we invested, and in that regard, we are playing with house money, which is that we do not have any costs associated with the BTC that we hold.  Personally, I don't feel any kind of compelling reason to employ such a harsh strategy or cashing out in order to "play with house money" because 1) that would be valuing my wealth in fiat rather than bitcoin, 2) there are no real fundamental threats to bitcoin, even if the price may perhaps go down to below $3k.. perhaps?  Perhaps? and 3) Even if I am playing with both principle and interest, such practice gives me way more money to "play" with and it is like borrowing from myself to continue to use such value to invest in bitcoin (remembering one important principle that it takes money to make money and the rich get richer, which happens to be applicable to myself and to other BTC hodlers, especially referring to those who have been largely invested into BTC before 2017)

I thought that you were a player? 

Now you have a pregnant fiancee?   

Can there be both?  You must have to dump the fiancee, when?  soon^tm, right?   

If the practice of not accepting coins that have any segwit anywhere in their history is actually true, then I would concede that lessens bitcoin's fungibility; however,  first of all this seems to be a fabricated set of facts... nonetheless if folks are merely playing such nonacceptance games for political reasons, then this group surely would have to garner support for such issue before such lessening of fungibility becomes something worthy of attention.  

Still seems like a FUD spreading phenomenon to me (and the topic of fungibility seems to be a large exaggeration rather than based on any kind of meaningful issue), rather than anything that is likely to become a real and meaningful problem.


Edited: Added response to bitserve


Of course this fungibility is not an issue, until either a government or individuals begin to engage in a practice of changing value of coins based on demarcation, which is currently not an issue, but instead a speculation of an issue that could come up perhaps maybe blah blah blah.  And, also assuming that there is no way to remove history, then there is a way that coins could begin to look distinguishable from their history... but so far remains a BIG SO FUCKING WHAT?


You seem to have identified the problem, and that is jbreher trying to distort issues.

That is bullshit.  You are not playing defense unless you actually present non-speculative facts.  If there is some innocent claim here, then I will be open to hear it.  Your framing the matter as if you are "playing defense" is to attempt to assert that you have already presented valid facts and logic and I doubt that is the case, unless I am missing something.

Geez jbreher... I see no reason for me to look up anything related to fungibility.  You are trying to make some kind of assertion that lack of fungibility is an issue, and seems that you are just making shit up.


Evidence supporting "fungibility" issues in bitcoin is that some peeople are cautiously accepting segwit transactions.... Never heard of such thing, and I doubt it is a problem.. yet.  Again you seem to be making shit up.

Even if I were to have bitcoins in a segwit address, and someone asserted they preferred to receive them from a non segwit address, then I could send.. or maybe there would be two transaction.. but again.. where is the fucking beef about this issue, besides some folks supposedly expressing reservations?  Is anyone actually refusing to accept transactions from segwit addresses?  show some proof.



O.k.  Fungibility issues would exist if some coins were easier to spend then others or if I could not get my coins sent because of some issue with them being tainted in some kind of way.  Again, where is the evidence of this seemingly fabricated issue  (and if it is not completely fabricated it is surely greatly exaggerated)?


Assertions of facts do not make facts, if you don't show evidence.


I have no burden to put forth facts to rebut your bare assertions, because I have not seen anything rising to the level of meaningful facts (beyond assertions about what could happen ... not something that is actually happening)


There may be discussion going on in BIG blocker disinformation circles?  Where are your  links of discussions beyond your speculation? 

Get the fuck out of here with your BIG BLOCKER distraction talking points - now trying to pervert the concept of fungibility.

Just because a coin is being used in a specific way that does not make such coin more or less fungible than if such coin is used in another way.

The concept of fungibility goes to a kind of blacklisting of coins that cause some coins to be less spendible than others, and there is no fucking blacklisting going on through segwit or through lightning network...

So once again.. get the fuck out of here with your nonsensical misleading assertions.




The primary attack vectors on bitcoin have been bcashers and big blocker nutjobs.  Segwit was adopted through consensus mechanisms, and lightning network is voluntarily being worked upon in a quasi-test phase, and surely utilizing the features of segwit in order to be more powerful... There seems to be a lot of consensus behind building upon lightning network that will likely be voluntary for a considerable amount of time, that will likely become bigger and BIGGER as adoption increases and as it continues testing and working out any possible bugs.  Sure some BIG BLOCKER nutjobs are going to continue to exaggerate negative speculation, like you seem to be doing, and to spread disinformation about supposed catastrophes of lightning network in order to pump their stupid-ass and largely non-substantiated negative talking points.

One of the main problems with segwit is that it makes spam attacks on bitcoin more expensive that is why NO LIKIE SEGIE WITTIE!!!!

I think that you are using the wrong word.

 Support refers to the bottom and resistance refers to on the way up.

I don't think that we can judge, exactly, regarding whether there is going to be a further bottom, merely from the fact that the price is NOT breaking far enough to the upside.  So, sometimes if the price floats within a range long enough (let's say between $6100 and $6800) then more of a base could form, but none of this is a given... because if bears are gathering coins, and soon or later gather enough coins to break below support, then the price goes down.  We could also get stuck in this price range for 6 months or longer, though that seems like an unlikely set of events.  

In other words, I don't really know.  Surely, it is not a given, even yet, that Doug Polk is going to lose his bet.  Maybe 50/50?  And, I don't even know if I would lean one way or another to say 49/51 or 51/49... I am surely conflicted, too, but if I were going to error, I would error on the side that the bottom has already been reached (that is only a 1% greater odds - or 2% if we look at the spread).


This particular range does not seem stable to me.. Maybe floating between $7500 and $8500 would be more stable?  But what do I know?


Just seems like an overplayed piece of FUD to me.  I doubt GOX really has very much of an influence, but surely on the margins GOX is one of the several factors.  If we get some more significant FUD, then perhaps more HODLers will be scared into parting with their coins?  Perhaps?


We don't want to rely too much on one factor or one narrative or that we are somehow locked into consolidation at this point.... of course it could happen.. but I am still leaning towards either the consolidation  area being in a higher price range or the other possibility that the price breaks down first, and then returns to this price arena for consolidation.. but it does not seem likely to consolidate here, without some further price movement either up or down, first.




I agree that if there is some meaningful FUD spreading, then that could help for more DOWN from here.



Your mind seems just fine, but your level of negativism seems a bit much - like you are shell shocked from 2014/2015, still.. hahahahhaha       

I would defer to you based on any of the actual mathematical details or perhaps to some other credible posters who are attempting to employ a moderately reasonable margin and/or leveraging BTC strategy.

My main point was not really so much to get caught up with mathematical details, but to assert that employing leverage/margin trading causes a considerable amount of amplification that I believe to be unnecessary because bitcoin is already very volatile to play around with that can also cause a lot of upside profits without even employing margin/leverage.

 Let's say in the past 5 years, you had been dollar cost average buying into bitcoin, you could have really screwed up and have an average cost of BTC of $2k, and you would still be ahead.

If you leverage traded, you can multiply your earnings and reduce your costs; however, you could also either lose all of your investment or end up having a much higher cost per BTC.  I don't think that your odds of earning increase merely because you use leverage, and refraining from leverage is likely much safer.. especially since BTC went up nearly 80x in the past 3 years, and also continues to be 3.2x up, even if you screwed up and somehow averaged out at $2k per BTC.

Your situation (and luck) comes off quite a bit worse than even I had anticipated.

I think that in the last year or more Vinny Lingham has lost a lot of credibility in the bitcoin space, and  I would take, even his pessimistic statement that you provided, with a BIG ASS grain of salt.

Throughout most of my adult life, I have been considerably conservative with my finances, so perhaps I am the wrong person to be commenting on the topic, and surely, when I started investing (around 30 years ago), there was no 24/7 individually flexible investment like bitcoin (or some of the other crypto options and temptations). 

Anyhow, i personally believe that each of us should attempt to build our base through strategy and systematic application of ideas.  Surely, when we are younger we can afford to gamble with some of our investment, but who the fuck wants to be digging themselves out of a hole, if he does not gamble correctly, and for that reason, I have never been much of a gambler.

So, yeah, I agree that largely, it takes money to make money, so if you do not have money you have to build a base upon which you can increasingly raise the stakes of your investment and or your ability to tolerate some kind of reasonable and safe leveraging strategy.  If you end up losing your base, then in my thinking that means that you were risking too much in your plays.. And, if you lose your base, then that means that you have to get back to building your base, rather than resuming with double down gambling.   So, to the extent that any gambling is occurring with any of your capital, that should be coming from fringe money rather than with either your central investing money and certainly not from your principle or your base that you have either built or are in the process of building.

It tends to take a long time to build a base, and you cannot really rush such building, even though sometimes if you employ solid investment principles, then you could get lucky to be in a good place to get luck and to have some lucky breaks that allow for faster building of a base.

Based on that chart, looks like more DOWN is on the way?   

That is a BIG ass bottom, too!!!      I am shocked!!!!   

I am in a similar boat to you, at least in terms of attempting to reduce my exchange exposure, but I believe that I was never trading in such extreme amounts because I could never bear to sell very much of my BTC stash at any one given time.  I believe that I went from about a bit over 60% of the value of my BTC investment on various exchanges to about 20-25% of the value of my BTC investment on exchanges. I figured that I could take  some of the BTC value off of exchanges while at the same time having enough BTC on the exchanges that allow me to continue to sell up to a certain amount of BTC if the BTC price goes shooting up.  Subsequently, I decided that it was not worth my risk to put larger amounts of BTC on exchanges, "in the event that there was some kind of LARGE justification for me to sell a large portion of my BTC quickly).  I will admit that around the time of the BCash hardfork, and some of the other uncertainties then in play about how the segwit adoption was going to get implemented, I did allocate a bit of a higher portion of BTC on exchanges because I concluded that some of the pulling of money off exchanges and the possible blockage of deposits and withdrawals for a certain period of time would possibly cause some additional lack of liquidity profitability by having some additional BTC on exchanges.


It seems that I am trading less than 10% of my stash, too, but I keep some extra BTC on exchanges that allow me to sell (currently up to $35k) without having to make additional deposits. I am not keeping extra BTC value on exchanges for other currently unknown events, and funny thing that if the total value of BTC goes shooting up, then you end up needing less BTC on exchanges, so it seems to have been largely playing out that way for me... and I discovered that I can still get some of the protections from the BTC volatility downside while selling smaller portions of my total holdings...  (maybe the whole situation just rises to the level of NOT wanting to generate too many dollars that I would not know what to do with besides putting back into BTC and my being willing to ride out more of the downside volatility without feeling any kind of need to make great increases to my BTC holdings by selling large amounts of BTC on the way up.  In other words, I have found selling relatively smaller amount of BTC to be adequately satisfying.. without any need to get too greedy).


I have concluded, for myself, that it is not necessary to become maniacally focused on the amount of profits that I make with each downward volatility as long as I continue to moderately follow a reasonable system that focuses on attempting to stack BTC and insuring myself (somewhat) from extreme possible downward price movements, yet for me the projections of future BTC holdings seem to be working out in a way that I am continuing to add to the stack (and the future projected stack at various price projection points.. It may be unrealistic to consider that the overall holdings will continue to increase or even increase in some kind of 30% to 40% range.. especially if the BTC price doubles or triples or does a 10x or more.  

So, yeah, if the goal is to stack BTC then a direct outcome of that kind of goal would be that the overall value of the holdings of both BTC and dollars is going to go down way more in the short term - and especially, like you said when there is something like a 65% BTC price drop (or perhaps more could come)


A large majority of us BTC bulls have decent chances of doing quite well with an overall BTC stacking practice, even if there are various points in the short term that we could calculate various ways that we could have made more money or better preserved our overall BTC portfolio value.

Also, if we are not leveraging and only investing what we can afford to lose, then we should not be becoming too emotional about the situation because all of our living expenses are covered, and then the main issue would only be that we are wishing to be more rich, rather than already being rich because we are mostly already living within our means and our bitcoin investment is not distracting us from living within our means.

You talk about regret a lot, no?  what purpose does it serve, except to fixate on water under the bridge things that cannot be changed.  The thing that you can do is to take actions from whatever point you are at to attempt to do the best that you can and to hopefully mitigate losses and lessen likelihoods of making the same mistakes that you regret.

Any of us who are HODLers of bitcoin could myopically focus on the same kinds of regrets, no?  But if we took a strategy at $15k or $19k that in our mind balanced the probabilities of UP and DOWN, while we ended up being wrong about those probabilities and DOWN ended up being more pervasive than we thought to be possible, then we could "regret," but what good does that do? except to adjust and to readjust along the way, and hopefully living with our decision while realizing that they are not set in stone at the present, except for in the past when we made them is already gone. 

Even posters like Tera Beara, who have been posting doom and gloom since the inception of her online bitcointalk persona, ends up being largely correct, yet even though she may have been sometimes presenting the odds as really high - even approaching 100%, the fact of the matter is that she did not know.. and maybe she realistically assigned 60% to an idea that I assigned 40%, and she ends up being more correct than me, but so fucking what?  The fact of the matter remains that each of us should be attempting to come up with our best ideas for ourselves, and striving, to the best of our abilities, to tailor our strategies to our views.  The direct investment abilities in Bitcoin allows for such individualization harmonization practices, which is ultimately beautiful, in the event that we can figure out ways NOT to hate and beat up on ourselves.   

For reasons like this, I continue to conclude (personally) that leveraging is not necessary, especially in bitcoin.  In bitcoin we are lucky to experience outrageously stupendous returns, and I we do not need to leverage in order to achieve such outrageously stupendous returns on our investment. 

Accordingly, if you just invest regularly, then the most that you can lose is 100% of what you put in - but if you employ leverage (especially using the margin trade vehicles supplied by exchanges), you not only can lose your 100% more quickly, you also lose it way faster, which causes a kind of magnification that if you employ 4x leverage than you can lose 400% - something like that.  Therefore, I still consider any kind of leveraging to be too far into a "gambling" rather than "investing" category, especially with bitcoin.

On topic and good points.

It is likely that propaganda funding is causing a considerable deal of the lightning misinformation, but in the end, it is also likely to work out in the wash because the better tech is going to prevail, and those of us investing into bitcoin have decent insight as to what is the better tech and we are able to buy and accumulate our coins for cheaper based on a lot of normies getting distracted either to sell their BTC or not to buy BTC based on such misinformation.

Good to maintain targets and plans for even extreme scenarios that might not happen.  Surely, preparing for below $5k is less extreme than preparing for below $3k but it remains a good practice psychologically and financially to prepare for both.

Personally, I think that the odds are greater than 50% that you are wrong again.