At some point, people are going to have to stop calling April 2013 a bubble, and start calling it a correction.

It was a deep correction - as to be expected following such a big run up, but the price didn't collapse so much as it bounced along, as you would expect during a correction. Then, as you point out, 6 months later we are back in the same region again.

Looks very much to me like we are just getting back on trend. Only this time we have a floor in the region of $80-100 instead of the ~$5 we had at the start of the previous run up.

Other than some nervous hesitation around the $266 mark, I don't think there is going to much resistance to the upside. 5-10 fold increase likely. 20 not out of the question though.

(Long. If you hadn't guessed)

You're doing nothing wrong. I think fleabag is just on his period

Come now fleabag. Don't pick on the newbies, post count is hardly the measure of a mans worth...

Nonsense.

I got in under a dollar. With $100 that I couldn't well afford at the time, on what looked like some ridiculous hair brained scheme. I rued the fact that I had seen it 6 months earlier and tried to set up a miner at that time but had been distracted.

At the time I bought in, for me the small possibility of making money, was far outweighed by the crazy percentage returns that started to become available to me (and improvement in my cash-flow, $100 was still a lot at that time. Business was struggling. I could barely pay the bills) as it first hit ~$6 then ~$9 then ~$15.

You simply cannot hold. If you are as old and wise as you say you are then you know those kind of returns absolutely compel you to take profits. History is replete with examples of people holding too long and losing it all. I've gambled in my time, I know all about that.

I watched in horror as it continued to rise through the 20s, but still that money was in my pocket. I was vindicated when it crashed hard from the 30s.

Then comes the dilemma, buy in or not, where is the bottom, how much can i really afford to risk, am I just going to lose everything I made.

I got back in tentatively in the teens, then a bit more in the single digits. Worried that everything I bought now might just end up as dead money. The bottom came in though, but at the time you don't know that, so many of my low bids were mostly missed as the price turned the corner.

As the price starts to rise your feel the relief that your underwater positions are starting to recover, but also start to regret how much you didn't buy when the price was 20% lower, and wrangle with yourself as to how much more to risk.

Time went by and I ended up with more then ten times my original outlay invested, but still only around 100 coins. I was a bit better off, but $1000 was a shit load of money to be effectively gambling with. It started to grow though, $2k then $3k this was insane amounts of money for me. I lost several hundred dollars in bitcoinica, but I was still up.

Was I to just hold. I had more money invested in bitcoin than I earned in a month! Why you would be insane not to take some profits. I did, several times, all the way up into the $200s (I was lucky enough to sell a few at $220 before the high at $266). Again I had that sinking feeling, everytime I sold the price kept rising. Thousands of dollars of potential profit up in smoke.

Still, I had money in my back pocket again. Then the price cashed, and I was vindicated.

But whats this, it stayed well above the previous all time high, I wasn't going to be buying back in (in some cases for more than I sold some of my coin). That just didn't make sense.

With hindsight of course, it would have made perfect sense

Now I'm in a situation where my BTC may soon be worth more than I have invested in everything else cumulatively (not including house). Yet my dollar cost average position is negative.

The pressure to cash out is insane. This is real serious amounts of money now. Not quite life changing, but certainly life-easing for the short term!

Suggesting someone (to whom $200 means something) can sit and watch that $200 investment turn into $1million, and at no point sell. Thats what's ridiculous.

And here I am trying to just that though

I have credit card debt with double digit APR, and I aint paying it off. I have a mortgage that is going to cost me double what I borrowed over its lifetime, and I ain't paying it off.

If I didn't believe that a $200 investment could make me a millionaire, you really think I'd be risking 5 figures on the ultimate meal ticket?

If I lose it all, then I will have plenty egg on my face for sure, but profit you never took was never profit in the first place, so I lost nothing. The profit I have taken, is actual profit.

So buy your $200 bitcoin, and thank me in ten years when you are a millionaire (not adjusted for inflation hehe). Provided you had the balls not to sell a single satoshi on the way...

It doeasnt depend on the failure of fiat, so much as the fear of failure of fiat. FOFOF!

This is my arbitrary line. Its more of a fairly conservative baseline support level. I expect there will continue to be bumps along the way, but I dont think the price will ever dip much below this line failing a black swan event.

$1000 BTC July '15  seems reasonable.

Interesting the volume for USD/EUR/GBP following the silk road bust, vs the volume for CNY.

Especially compared to the relative CNY volume recently (baidu hype?)

I dunno what it all means, but its fun!

An interesting rebuttal, thanks for posting I was just happy knowing that, as a european, I am pretty much forced to trade in USD (so yes derp, I do "incur tons of risk and fees" just to use a USD exchange - what choice do I have?) I only ever sell in EUR when I want to take some fiat back out via SEPA.

Listen, and understand. That derpinator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead tired of it's USA über alles logic.

As I recall, gox pretty much ditched customers in the USA when all the USD issues kicked off. So gox paying out in japan (and europe) is pretty relevant. If one is american, and one still has USD in gox then I suggest one moves with the times.

The premise of this whole line of inquiry was that gox is insolvent. Your point implied that the lack of USD withdrawal was proof of this (or at least indicative that this may be the case). Whereas zanglebert pointed out they were still paying out in japan. I (admittedly somewhat flippantly) pointed out that was the case in europe too.

Both these facts are more indicative that the lack of USD payout is less to do with solvency and more to do with regulatory issues in the relevant country.

You can continue to argue about the size of USD trade in bitcoin. It doesn't change the fact that gox seems to be doing a roaring trade everywhere else.

Can you logic me another confusion by your separation of the ideas?

Thats how my brain felt when I read your post.

You have identified trade volume on gox/bitstamp/etc etc denominated in USD is higher than the trade volume in other currencies.

You are attempting to assert something from this. *My* magic 8-ball says "Concentrate and ask again"

Tell me exactly what it is you think it means? From where I am sat, in the context of the thread, the implication is that you think because the trade(s) are in USD then it must be US citizens on both sides.

It's actually pretty amusing for this european (that has struggled on many an occasion, to deal with the fact that all the exchanges insisted on you depositing USD, which meant - for your average european - jumping through hoops, transferring through various dodgy outfits, being gouged for commission, and fees each step of the way just to be able to get dollars onto gox and buy some coins) to see the tables turned.

Having pointed out how dimwitted it would be to assume that a USD trade means no aliens were involved, you have no choice but to try and pretend you thought something else (or just accept you did a booboo), so you'll come up with some flimsy bullshit about how you meant something else, but alas I already called you on that. So really your best course of action then will be to pretend you never noticed this reply, and ignore that too. Oh but now you can't really do that either as it would also prove me right. That only leaves going full retard. Which I expect in 3... 2... 1...

more like the kind of movement you might expect from a commodity huh?

No silly, everyone lives in america, so thats all that matters ~derp

They are still paying out fine in that tiny backwater of Europe too...

This is the most insightful post on this thread.

I am gutted my ROI is going to be abysmal, but ever bitcent it makes when it finally gets here is a bitcent more than i have right now.

I expect to go through the same painful realisation for the monarch too. Yes I got fished in on that as well

did venmo pay for this adverthreadisment?

It here http://toastwallet.com

"Just" !?

Thats over $200 of opinion right there!

I also vote 2014, probably summertime, and the volatility will still be such that you'll see several percent swings on several days out of any given month.


The $10 swings today will be $100 swings... crazy times. Gonna be real hard to hold tight!

That german billionaire has so much money compared to BTC that he couldmove the market himself right now. He didnt get to be a billionaire by being stupid though. Softly softly, occasional buying, diversifying holdings...

The billionaires of the world could very well be accumulating right now.

The most likely scenario, is everyone that gets into it is accumulating, according ot their own personal NW, and that those involved follow a normal distribution of NW.

The most boring and likely scenario, is that by the time this thing unfolds, the fiat rich will be BTC rich, and the fiat poor will be BTC poor. There may be a little variance in the 'I mortgaged my soul and put it all into BTC' crowd. They didn't get rich by being savvy though, they took a risk and it paid off.

This makes no sense. How can another crypto-currency come along, and go from nothing to 'everyone can mine' right at the beginning. Any currency is going to have to go through some kind of adoption phase. Everyone can mine BTC now, in fact people are, by the boatload - look at the hash rate! BTC has built userbase, value, recognition, reputation and continues to go from strength to strength. For every person that jumps on board there are several others who heard about it and ignored, dismissed it. So the number of people who know about BTC is some multiple of the number of people who actively have or use BTC. This is the one, this is it. Its TCP/IP happening now, technically not necessarily the best solution, many other alt currencies make claims to better than BTC in a variety of ways. Uptake and momentum set BTC way ahead of the competition.

I think BTC 'banks' will form, they will be the 'NAT' of bitcoin. They will handle processing millions of transactions a second, only transferring stuff out onto the blockchain when they need to deal with other BTC banks. They will solve the issue of instant micropayments without wating for confirmations. This is how BTC can become real money that people are used to. It doesnt stop BTC being used by individuals using the block chain for transactions like they do now, its just an extra layer.

How do you pull the plug on bitcoin, it would be like pulling the plug on TCP/IP!

If the govt(s) start an official crypto currency, how is that going to work. First it has the undesirable quality of belonging to a govt, who of course get the jump on mining from the start, and which govt is gonna do it, and how are all the other govts going to feel about that? Are they all going to try and launch their own. Clinging to the relic of geographical boundaries? Seems somewhat inferior already.

I'm sure there is stuff I haven't thought of, and probably some black swan will come floating along any second to usurp all rationality, but in the meantime you position yourself to take advantage of the most likely outcomes, and you hedge to make sure the black swan doesn't destroy you.

Bon voyage!

The thing about april 2013.. its never gone anywhere near back to baseline, let alone below. Sure everyone and their uncle saw the exponential rise was unsustainable, but back out a year and the original long term trend seems to be solid.

The low after the ATH was $50?

Does that mean it was only in bubble territory around mid march when we hit $50 for the first time, or maybe even higher.

That would imply that the push from $12 at the backend of last year was fairly legit growth.

I'm about as permabull as you can get but even i cashed out a little on the way up to $200+ cos it seemed overblown.

I think we have reverted, and the past few weeks growth are a resumption of that first phase of growth that took us past the previous ATH of ~$30 not rushing to buy more. Just happy to be a part of it.

As ever it all depends on whether the protocol fails. If it doesn't then all these peaks and troughs are just going to end up looking like the normal gyrations of a typical growth stock in its early days. See you at $1m guys

You don't need bags of money. You need time and talent. Money happens later. Good luck to the guy.