Duke944 - Are you dissing our little friends  (AKA bitcoins)?

Does anyone know what is going on with bitfinex?

For about the last 90 minutes, the trade volume has been quite low, and the price has been stuck at $774.49.

There appears to be a wall of 100 coins to buy, but I am not sure how that would hold anything up - as if there were some kind of rush to sell?  

The site seems to be working, just weird to have that going on with a recent downward movement that is kind of springing back on all of the other exchanges.

(edit:  As soon as I post, it seems to have gotten unstuck.  Now that  is POWER!!!!!!!)

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are providing your genuine assessment, and not talking your book.  I know that some folks want to come in here and talk their books, but you really don't strike me that way... (in regards to "talking book", there is nothing wrong with making various BTC price predictions and betting accordingly, but I think that it is another story that a book talker takes a position, and then comes in here attempting to get others to follow the already taken position).

Sure, each of us is entitled to our own scenarios and viewpoints about the price direction of bitcoin, yet to me, it seems as though you are describing a scenario that is less than likely to occur, especially when you are suggesting that the new ATH will not be reached until 2018.

Even though I am thinking up to a 25% correction sometime before $888, I really don't think such a correction is going to keep us down for more than a few months.... and yeah a 25% correction could take place at any time.. including right now or wait a little bit longer.

We are all just winging it in prediction land - but in the end, to me, there just seems to be too much widespread adoption taking place including looking at local bitcoin stats, infrastructure development, positive developments with seg wit, major currency problems around the world, ongoing manipulation of gold and silver, dumbass trump election results, an already experienced correction of nearly 3 years (from $1163 to present) and even overall lack of regulatory hostility.  

Accordingly, bitcoin's market cap remains so small while there continues to exist a multitude of reasons that there are multiple upwards price pressures... including also the fact that bitcoin still is a paradigm changing invention that is delivering a product that is unlike any other product previously seen... and still has no meaningful competition.  

I am NOT saying that your described scenario could not occur, but given the whole scheme of things, including factors that I mentioned above, your scenario is seeming like about a less than 25% chance of occurring (including the part in which you assert that a new ATH is not reached until 2018).

What are your "arguably" reasonable long term bear thoughts, Tzupy?   Are you thinking down from here or up?  We going below $750 before we go above $800?

I was kind of thinking above $800 first, and I was also thinking about revising my top range for this up streak to somewhere between $833 and $888 before we get at least one more 15% to 25% correction.... but yeah, we gotta solidly get beyond these upper $700 price points first...and another decent correction of 10% or more could squeeze a number of longs in order to make "up" more comfortable.. but wouldn't it take at least 15% or even 20% down to sufficiently trigger the squeezing of longs?

Well, maybe you are correct that luck is a little too fateful of a term and maybe a bit too imprecise, because you are correct that it does take a certain level of perseverance to continue to buy BTC during a bear market and to continue to HODL and accumulate BTC (and not sell when prices are either flat or appearing to want to go down more) while there were ongoing attempted battles to push BTC prices below $200 (which ended up being the bottom - and maybe there was also some "luck" in the whole scheme of things... that the Bitfinex hack (for example) did not happen in the lower $200s rather than in the lower $600s? )

You can read it any way that you like. 

I still consider such a perspective to be bearish, and the reality of the matter is that there is no real "building of a base" in this kind of price range - bitcoin is much too small, much too dynamic, much to ongoing in development and much too controversial.  There is going to be volatility before any base is established, and the base is likely to be in the $100Billion to $10 trillion market cap range, not in the $10 billion to $20 billion range. 

At the same time, Bitcoin is going to continue to have battles, and sure it is a much better for this phenomenon to currently be in the $12.5 billion dollar range, than to be in the sub $5billion dollar range from a bit more than a year ago.

Actually, I have a little bit of a personal story about this buying very small amounts of BTC and accumulating.  


Between November 2013 and about January 2015, I invested most all the money that I had preallocated to invest in bitcoin, yet, as we know through the first 8 months of 2015, bitcoin floated largely in the mid-$200s (it's lowest price for the previous 14 to 20 months), so it was a good time to add value to the bitcoin holdings.  

However between February and August 2015, I had some cash flow issues, due to some business arrangements that I had (not bitcoin related).  Therefore, through the February to August 2015 period, I would buy very very small amounts of bitcoin on almost a daily basis with every extra $4 or $20 dollars that I had coming in (besides what I needed for my living expenses and other business expenses).

 Over those about 7 months, the ongoing small and regular amounts of bitcoin purchases ended up adding up to thousands of dollars invested into bitcoin that ended up helping me to justify my beginning to trade BTC in October 2015 (meaning that I could begin selling very small amounts of BTC at a profit, after the price began to break above $250).  

In essence my ongoing accumulation of very small amounts of BTC caused me to accumulate a sufficient quantity of coins below $250 in order to justify (in my mind) that I could begin to sell small amounts of BTC at a profit and then to apportion my risks in the investment (in case the price of BTC came back down again - which it kind of went up and continued to go up from there.. hahahahaha... lucky for all of us who HODLd and continued to accumulate BTC through that long bear market period)

You don't have to invest your life savings all at once.

Just dollar cost average invest into bitcoin with what you can afford, whether that is $10 per month or $400 per week or $100 per day.. or $1 per day.  There are a lot of ways to invest an amount that is comfortable and should not cause regrets, as long as you try to apportion it to your own personal financial situation.

For example, I am a kind of cautious person when it comes to investing, and it took me more than a year to establish my initial investment stake into bitcoin and to achieve a kind of feeling of comfort that I had a decent stake in bitcoin that was proportionate to my overall view of the investment (in contrast with and proportioned to other investments that I had at that time in light of my timeline and other personal circumstances)

Probably felt the same way at $222, $333, $444 and $555, too,,, 

I consider this article to be a bit bearish...

The thrust of the article seems to predict that bitcoin peaks below $1000  in the end of January and then experiences a considerable price reversal..

Bitcoin is not anywhere near broken, whether it has to do with governance (as you suggest) or technological innovativeness. 

Are you one of those bigblocker troll nutjobs, Rawdog? 

We have a lot of great things going on in bitcoin, including the likely upcoming live version of seg wit - likely in the coming year or so and too bad Circle has chosen to alter its business model in such a way that is less helpful in getting new regular folks into bitcoin - likely Circle had some concerns about profitability, monetization of their model and possibly were concerned about some of the regulatory issues involved with buying/selling bitcoins directly with their customers.

I force nearly all of my first time transactions through LocalBitcoins, even though it costs me 1% (which tends to be a decent percentage of the profits), and if the buyer/seller refuses to transact through Local bitcoins for at least one ("get to know you") transaction, then I refuse to do business with them... hahahahaha.... it's my way of making sure that I get folks who are ready, willing and able to comply with all of the terms of my ad.. rather than to either attempt to negotiate new terms or otherwise be difficult to deal with (which sometimes can be the case in meeting random folks through the interwebs).

Which wallet - or app do you use?  Are you trading directly through local bitcoins, and then using their wallet?  I am pretty sure that they are changing the address for every transaction, even though you may not be able to see that under the surface?

I use the local bitcoin wallet for my first transactions with folks, but then after I get to know them, I will do future transactions directly by using the Blockchain app.... and I manually create new addresses with the blockchain app (sometimes I will reuse the addresses a few times before I transfer all of the coins out and archive them).

And, you are correct with your indication (by your description of your situation as an example) that there are going to be differing levels of efforts that are made in the direction of attempting some level of privacy.

Minimum safeguards can be using a unique address for each transaction (or at least mostly attempting such), and sending coins to locations, such as exchanges, that are less involved in gathering your personal information.

It does become a little bit cumbersome to deal with multiple address, but you can attempt to develop systems to deal with keeping track and organizing such... even though less than a perfect situation.

I have noticed that dynamic too, that there are some geographical areas in which the BTC price differences are considerable, and so we may be making slightly different points.  

I agree with you that you should attempt to take advantage of your profitable BTC trading opportunities while they last and maybe before too much competition comes into your area.

I, personally, am in an area that already has a lot of local bitcoin traders, and so the premiums on BTC trading are not as large, yet I have honed a few seemingly "loyal" local bitcoin customers on both the selling and buying side.

Yet, part of my earlier point remains that even if some of the BTC trade related profits may not be large, sometimes it is much more prudent and practical to lock in the BTC related trade profits right away, rather than attempting to gamble for larger profits (and then potentially lose it all or have to take a smaller profit level due to having had gambled too much).  

Sure, some degree of leverage or margin or gambling of principle may be practical in some circumstances and for some persons and their circumstances, but it remains dangerous to leverage or to gamble with large portions of your profits and principle on a regular basis but instead have a plan that continuously locks in profits and maybe just gambles with a small percentage of the proceeds of the overall trading portfolio.  

For some folks, they may be comfortable gambling or leveraging with larger amounts of their portfolio (such as 50%), but frequently, it will be prudent to leverage or gamble smaller portions of the overall trading portfolio (whether principle or profits), such as 20% or less  - and maybe even less than 5% can still be prudent, profitable while safeguarding and leveraging and gambling smaller parts of a person's BTC-related holdings (and striving not to become too greedy).

I think that you are correct.  There is a kind of mindset that wants to keep doubling down and leveraging, and even when those kinds of folks might have periods of rationality and logic, they let a kind of greed - or gambling or rolling the dice  - take over their actions.. and periodically they win really big, but in the long run, the odds catch up with them and they are constantly attempting to dig themselves out of holes.

So we should continuously attempt to caution folks against this kind of approach, because it is dangerous - and even if they have won BIG TIME in the past, they gotta consider better long term approaches that may not make as much money but help to set themselves up for longer term profits and/or financial security.

From time to time, I have some of those kinds of Local bitcoin (or direct) trades that cause me to experience an immediate $100 or more locked profit, and sometimes it can take quite a while to put sufficient systems in place (having money in a multitude of places and floating the money) to be able to lock in those levels of instant profits, and really, the practice of profits may begin with much lower levels of profits and just getting used to locking them in on a regular basis.  I frequently have trades that only have $1 or so profits, but sometimes, they will run a streak and I get locked in profits from a multitude of small profits, but having the smaller profit locking in system in place allows for the taking advantage situations and opportunities for larger profit trades, without putting a large portion of the principle at risk.

Actually, I sent several through Circle, ranging between $5 and $40 (mostly $5), and one time about a year ago, I requested that I receive several of them back from Circle, because they looked like they had not been processed.  Circle said that they could only reverse the ones that had not been opened in the e-mail, but if the e-mail had been opened, then they could not reverse it.

I'm just saying that if we wish for less volatility we need increases in the market cap, and even though upwards price pressures are looking really good at the moment and in the past couple of months - nonetheless, we cannot even rest assured that the upwards is going to come.. even though we want that part too.

I think that we just need to prepare for both ways, and act in our own self interests.  If prices shot up to $3k or $5k.. I am going to sell coins, but I am not very likely to sell all of them... I sell a little bit all the way up, and tentatively, the most that I would sell would be in the 60% territory.. but I already have money in both bitcoin and in fiat that is prepared for price movements in either direction.. I would like more upwards, certainly, but currently my BTC/dollar allocation is at about 93% bitcoin and 7% fiat.. and even though I feel protected, I still get nervous when the price moves in either direction, and thinking that I should have allocated more in one direction or another.. so I think that it is just better to have a plan and attempt to stick with it as much as possible while maybe making small tweaks here and there based on expected and unexpected periods of volatility in either direction.

O.k.  I understand and accept your point that bitcoin has seemed to become a bit more stable and the violent price swings have seemed to become less violent, but even you know that bitcoin is no where near becoming close to serving as some kind of stable currency... and that can be determined by it's mere small market cap of less than $13 billion.

We may have gotten lucky to experience some fewer bouts of extreme volatility, but it seems to be just wishful thinking to expect that bitcoin is in such a state that it could evolve in a kind of peaceful upwards trajectory.. It is just not going to happen.. The chances of such peaceful transition are probably quite lower than 1%, so why attempt to project such an unlikely scenario?


Sure any increase in bitcoin's market cap is going to bring some additional stability, but bitcoin would need to experience far in excess of 100x increase in it's market cap to become less susceptible to volatility (maybe even 1000x could be in the minimum range?)  Of course, every significant percentage increase in market cap does help to lessen bitcoin's volatility, and probably the greater diversification of exchanges help too, but I continue to think that it is going to take a while to reach a less volatile state (such as a kind that you seem to be referring to)

Achow101...

Great that you have a lot of patience answering apparent trolls.


Yeah, at first, maybe we can give them some benefit of the doubt, but when they keep insisting on the bigblocker talking points while claiming to not understand technicalities while at the same time suggesting that seg wit is "too complex" and suggesting that a hard fork is preferable to a soft fork... blah blah blah, we certainly can get the sense that they are disingenuous, just bringing over some big blocker nut job talking points.. and likely trolling.