Finally, you stepped out of your race hating hut, and you proclaimed something that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense...

I had a quick flash thought of giving you a merit that dissipated quickly when I realized that I cannot give merits for just a string of one good post.  hahahahahaha   

I have been employing this system (more or less) on the way up since about $250 (starting in October 2015), and I am learning along the way, because in the beginning, sometimes I would get too excited by price movements in one direction and I would deviate from the system - which only caused me to fuck myself in the end...  A good example is my newbie application of his system when the price shot up from $270 to $500 in November 2015, I sold way too little.. and I was not able to take as much advantage of the dip back down to $300.. fuck.. I learned from that to just follow my formula... and, yeah, I have not been perfectly following it, because even I can become emotional with great market moves and stagnation.

 I became more disciplined in stopping my deviation from following the formula, and after I stopped deviating and only tweaking my application a little bit here and there, the system ended up working so much better because we are really never able to determine exactly when the price is going to turn, and I don't know how to make those kinds of predictions and I don't really believe folks who claim to be able to make those kinds of predictions.   

I mean, we had a 70% price correction, and I would have been decently comfortable buying BTC down to a 90% or more correction, if it would have happened (of course I would not have liked it, but my system allowed the building up of fiat that could be used for buying back all the way down, if the price were to go down).

Even though in my earlier post I started out saying that "I may have to change my cashing out formula", I am thinking that I am lying with that kind of assertion because I really don't conclude that it would be wise to change something that really works to prepare for both UP and DOWN...

Surely, I still get nervous in each price direction and when the price seems to be moving beyond rational expectations, and sometimes I wish that I would have NOT sold so much or I wish that I would have bought more.. or I wished that I would have sold more.. blah blah blah.. we know the drill about having some regrets after the market has already moved. but in the end, we don't really know what the fuck the market is going to do and when it is going to do it and for how long it is going to do it.  So, just following the formula with minor tweaks here and there really provides a lot of comfort and insurance for such seemingly ongoing volatile asset like this bitcoin thingie ma-jiggie.

Seem like one of the biggest guarantees that we have in bitcoin remains volatility.. NOT whether we are going up or if we are going down... but just volatility.. and if we are understanding the fundamentals of bitcoin sufficiently, then we can recognize that there is a decent chance that even though we are going up and down and up and down, just like the rollercoaster guy, it remains quite likely that we are going to continue to have upwards BTC price movement on an ongoing basis and in the long run.. and BTFD remains a good practice to have and a good thing to prepare for on an ongoing basis by selling small amounts on the way up.......

So, largely, the last few days, I have been mostly selling, and it looks like I am going to continue to be selling, and the amounts are small because we cannot be sure if we are continuing to go up or when this little fake out bad boy is going to reverse.. Maybe it will and maybe it won't and in the end my strategy allows me to NOT care... even though I am hoping a bit more that we be going UP.. UP is so much more fun than DOWN, no?....   Bring on the hookers, blow and lambos... hahahahahaha

Perhaps, I may have to change my cashing out formula because the formula allows for my selling about 1% for every 10% price rise, so for example, if I start out with $100, and the price shoots up 10x, then I have cashed out about the equivalent of my original investment of $100 but I still have about 9x of the principle which is $900. The same thing is true for the next 10x and the next 10x, so if anyone follows such a formula, then he would not run out of BTC to sell in the event that the price continues to increase by 10x, yet he will have accumulated a lot of fiat, to decide whether to keep it for reinvesting (because I don't think that we ever go up a straight 10x without some kind of price correction in there) or to cash some or all of that fiat out.

Many of  us could already have issues like this, besides me, no?  But the problem that HairyMac was referring to was if guys and gal are cashing out too much too quickly and then run out... but if we have a formula for cashing out, we do not run out of BTC.

We know that we had about a 10x increase from $500 to $5k, and now we are at an additional 2x from $5k to $10k, but with the numbers presented by mfort312, it appears that there could be another couple of 10x increases within the price increase speculation, and the formula that I follow does not allow for running out of BTC, even if there were such a great increase...

My avatar was not taking sides at all in this matter and barely even attempting to engage in the substance of the discussion, because it only seemed to be obsessed with suchmoon, but surely not in any kind of negative way.. but just in a kind of tit for tat kind of way...   you know the saying that imitation is a form of flattery.. I think that is what my avatar was attempting.

Regarding accusation of accounts being controlled by one folk or another, the suspicions sometimes run a bit too high, but I don't have any evidence to really jump into that kind of battle to the extent that there might be evidence or logic in this case in any kind of direction.

For the most part, I thought that this was a thread to attempt to beat up on Lauda... I am sure Lauda is happy to get a bit of breathing space for a while and perhaps to get something more meaningful done.     Lauda.. can you come back, so we can beat up on you and your cat, or at least try?

Yeah, but my avatar could not stop itself from wanting to spout something out, and I don't even think that my avatar cared if it was on topic or not, because it did not even seem to care about the substance of the signature discussion...  It seemed to have gone into a kind of autopilot mode, and seemed to want to get in a little dig... it was saying, suchmoon, suchmoon.. .and laughing... for some reason....   I tried to stop its wordiness choices, but I couldn't.   

I won't run out....            Even though my chart only goes up about 8x from current price, but I suppose I can add a few more lines onto my projections to account for these real probable situations.

... I anticipate that even if BTC prices were to shoot straight up to $1.28million faster than the timeline, my formula for selling does not allow me to run out, and probably I wouldn't even go below 50%, if BTC prices were to shoot straight the fuck up.....

I already have too much fiat, now, so the problem of too much fiat seems likely to exacerbate based on these totally "reasonable" BTC price projections... really gonna be problems of the 1%... OMG    


Edit:  I just went back to my charts, and I added a few more rows to project that if I go out 12x with the projection, that is about $126k per BTC, and if the price went shooting up to that price, sure it adds up to a lot of Fiat getting added to my accounts, but that fiat can be used to buy back BTC, I suppose...

My problem does not seem to be NOT having enough BTC in the event that the price goes shooting up, but instead, I am going to need to start spending more money in the very near future - since we cannot take this money with us... fuck..   This is an emergency, no? 

Seems that I have too many BTC..   Anyone want some BTC?  

Bob.. you are going to have the same problem, no?  Better start spending money soon.. .. upgrade your porsche to a lambo.. right away.. buy a rocket to send one porsche up into space and get another upgraded one.  Start living higher on the hog... RIGHT NOW.  Seems that we be going UP and going to cause a lot of problems of RICHIE.

Based on mfort312's BTC floor specialism, I FTFY.

Sarcasm shill...


hahahahahahahaha


For some strange reason, Me, my avatar and I  (the three of us, aka "we")  kind of like it..    

hahahahahaha...   fair enough.

Sticking to your guns.   

You are not a "poor sport".

You are a debbie downer, a party poop, a negative nancy, or a glass half-full thinker, which is not new for you.


In other words, you have had a tendency to grant the downside much more weight that it deserves, even when the news is good.  I think that we need to send someone over to you and Rosewater, and disable your BTC sell buttons.... you fucks...  You guys are crashing dee price of our little friends.... with all your negative thinking and undue influences        

Perhaps we could send user YourMother to be good for this job?  or even Tera or jbreher would work since even they are more bullish then you guys in these war scenarios.. I would not mind sending fatman, but probably he would end up creating alliances with your to join in with selling his .3472 BTC holdings.    

hahahahaha...

your summary, is shit happens... ok.           


How about you summarize it as:  "I did not read that shit."     Would probably be more accurate.   

Yep... I think that you make the above point fairly clearly, jbreher, and that is once the buy/sell orders are set up, then when you are employing the incrementalist trade (or step trading) practice, you just sit back and add orders as previously set orders fill and rake in the money from those orders filling (whether you are taking your profits in BTC or fiat is your choice).

Mistakes
I think that this is a decent place to bring up that practicing the employment of your incremental trading strategy can really help to make the whole process become almost self-propelled because you kind of get into a groove.. yet, if we are humans, from time to time, we are going to make mistakes, and I suppose the same could be true if we were attempting to program bots (which I do not use), we might end up programming some aspect of the bot incorrectly which causes a screw up in our intention.

Since both jbreher and I are attempting to apply our system manually, I am sure that jbreher has had some similar experiences as me in which he has made mistakes in entering his buy/sell orders, and if he catches the mistake before it executes, then no harm, no foul.   On the other hand sometimes, mistakes are made that cause either an immediate execution of the order or you do not notice the mistake until after the mistaken order had already executed.. perhaps putting in too large of an order or accidentally making a market buy/sell when you had meant to set up a limited order.  

Probably about 1-3 times per month I make some kind of mistaken order that executes before I can catch it and causes me to have to restructure some aspects of my buy/sell orders in order to make up, in my mind, for my mistake(s). In those cases, I restructure my orders in such a way that allows me to either profit from the mistake or at least to largely neutralize the mistake (which might merely be my own mental framework and ability to move on from the mistake).

I will outline a mistake example from yesterday.

Yesterday, when BTC prices reached $10k, I had several BTC sell orders execute, and I had been getting a bit anxious so I had actually lowered some of my BTC trading price intervals in order that: 1) I could get some more BTC trading action and 2) to attempt to make up for inability to sign into GDAX, but I surmised that my outstanding preset BTC sell orders on GDAX are still going to trigger without my ability to verify if they had triggered because I cannot sign into GDAX's service (those fucks).  

So, after one of my BTC sell orders executed at just below $10k, I had intended to create two buy orders around $9k - one buy order just above $9k and the second one at about $9,300.  When I entered the just above $9k order, I accidentally typed in $10,xxx, which caused an immediate market buy order at the then price of $10,028... and I said to my selfie, "fuck!!   I had just sold at $9,9xx, and now I just bought a decent portion (about 1/4 of the total) of that back at $10,028."

My ballpark remedy for my mistake involved on the buy end setting only one buy order, instead of two, in the lower $9,0xx range and lowering that buy amount if the BTC price were to go down to those levels.   My remedy on the sell end was to remove two of my upper sell orders at $10,4xx and $10,9xx and to parcel out my sell orders into 5 sell orders that would more than adequately make up for my mistaken buy at $10,028, if BTC prices were to go up.. Therefore my new sell orders were adjusted to be spread out and set at $10,2xx, $10,4xx $10,7xx, $10,9xx and $11,2xx.  

I feel good about my ballpark remedy for my mistake, and I have become neutral in my own mind regarding the direction of BTC prices.  Accordingly, in my mind, I consider my mistake to be remedied no matter which way BTC prices go.  If BTC prices go up, then I profit by the way I set my additional sell orders, and if the BTC price goes down, I buy less BTC, and consider my $10,028 to have been a buy that adds to my BTC accumulation (which I am trying to achieve anyhow).  I consider my whole accidental buy of 1/4 of my $9,9xx sell amount at $10,028 to have been largely neutralized by my removal of one of my buy orders and decreasing the buy amount on my other buy order at $9,0xx.  

Surely, in this actual situation, I do come out better if BTC prices go up, but since I am in this whole BTC accumulation business for the long term, and I have been valuing my wealth in bitcoin (as Adam Meister says) and I am not bothered by some additional BTC that I ended up accumulating because in the long run, I do consider that my goal is to accumulate BTC and that in the long run, BTC prices are going to go up much beyond my $10,028 mistaken purchase price (which was buying back about 1/4 of the amount that I had sold at $9,9xx)..***

Hopefully, this example outlines one approach that an incrementalist (step) trader might employ to deal with a mistake that would allow:  1)  to potentially profit from the mistake, and 2) to largely mentally move on from the mistake, while allowing the BTC price to come to his/her position rather than taking some more drastic (or risky gambling) measure that might either lock in losses or cause too much gambling of the holdings or stress.


*** actually another way of characterizing my BTC buy mistake is that I had sold 1/4 less than I had originally planned. because I bought 1/4 of the amount that I sold back right away, so that would have been a net selling of 1/4 less BTC.

O.k....   Your earlier point makes more sense, now.  Thanks for the ELI5 clarification, which is good for me, and may help out some others too with these ongoing assertions of fitting analogies.

Since you bring up Andreas.  Here's a decent question answer video from him from today attempting to clarify some of the misconceptions about lightning network.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4TjfaLgzj4

I thought that bitcoin is the HTTP.. and everything get's built upon bitcoin.. no?

I'm not wordy man, either (NOT)... yet I have to agree with the picnic bear on this not a bear market assessment.  

A less than 2 month price correction does not rise to the level of a bear market, but if we are still bouncing down to the $7k territory in 6 months, both the picnic bear and I may have to reconsider our assessment based on those new facts (that have not yet played out, as I type...    ) , and perhaps jbreher and I would conclude differently depending on what happens in these upcoming 6 months in the event that we are still bouncing down to $7k during that time.

On the other hand, if we bounce around in the range of $7k to $20k in the next 6 months, then that would not necessarily be bearish, but if we are having difficulties getting above $10k or maintaining prices above $10k in the next 6 months or so, and we still keep retesting the $7ks, then perhaps under those kinds of facts (that have not played out yet) we might be within the range of bear market considerations.

In other words, currently, our facts of BTC price performance between August 2017 and even just focusing on December 2017 until now seem quite far from a bear market definition based on a mere less than 2 months of this current correction and a seeming rebound from the bottom of that correction... We gotta look at the context, hello, and that context is broader than merely the past less than 2 months..

Oh oh crystal ball, waht u b   tellin    me?
 




Oh you can see that I am not really looking into the crystal ball, I am looking at you.  hahahahaha

I thought that initially Theymos had written something in the OP of the merit announcement thread about merit sources being prohibited from selling merit, but he seems to have reworded it and removed such language, but i am sure that he said it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522

Oh I found this language in the merit page for merit sources:

>>>>>>You are a merit source. The next XXX merit you spend will come from your source rather than your sMerit balance. Merit spent from your source will come back in 30 days. Unused source merit is wasted. It is not allowed for merit sources to sell their merit.<<<<<<


I think that the closest language regarding regular members trading merits was this:


From this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg29540717#msg29540717

I thought that selling of merit was only disallowed for sources.   

Yeah, but you know as well as anyone that DT1 is different from DT2, and hypothetically if Theymos wanted to take someone from DT2 and put them on DT1, then he could do that. 

Sure, he might get some pushback from within the ranks, but theoretically it is within his discretion to add to DT1 or subtract from DT1, if he concluded that it would serve his purpose(s) or benefit him more than it cost him.