Great points, AlexGR.

Yeah, sure it is nice if transactions can be confirmed in less than an hour, but it is also acceptable that from time to time, transactions may take several hours and even a day to go through.. still much faster, economical, individual empowering and secure than fiat..  and the whole bitcoin thingie-ma-jiggie is a moving target, and evolving and expanding, so even if we have some delays and some increases in fees... those matters are being worked on and improved upon to maintain the robustness of the whole bitcoin space and what it has to offer to personal finances and control over value....

If you had not noticed yet, I'm kind of stubborn, and I don't change my views very easily... Instead, I tweak from time to time, and yeah, maybe I will tweak my views into oblivion.. but nonetheless, I would characterize that as tweaking rather than starting over again with a whole new paradigm and way of thinking. 

This journey is critical  - and crazy...

Interesting thing regarding the diversity of governmental bodies, and even if one governmental body may be working against bitcoin (whether overtly or covertly), other governmental bodies may be working in favor of bitcoin...

In the end, who the fuck is going to win...?  hahahaha ... we likely realize that even though there may be some battling and attempts at dividing and conquering in the bitcoin space.. there is something that is difficult to stop about bitcoin, and smart people realize that bitcoin is people empowering.. in spite of what of the negative propaganda may attempt to embed into public consciousness.

Regarding the above blurb article about IMF assessment, they probably did not clear their assertions therein with American banks.. hahaha.

I do believe that securing your investment should involve both buying and selling; however, I do understand that a lot of bitcoin investors have secured a lot of value by merely investing and holding (and also continuing to buy on dips).  There is nothing wrong with any of these various kinds of views, so long as you are both financially and psychologically able to endure the various price dip periods, which are inevitable to happen at various quasi-unexpected times (or at least difficult to predict times).

Nonetheless, at the current time, a lot of the factors seem to be very much in place for a very decent pumping of btc prices in part based on such an extended period of active and successful price suppression efforts over the past more than 2 years.  

I am feeling pretty optimistic at the moment, and recalling the price prediction charts that I had done before, there likely would be some movements on various aspects of my optimism regarding the upward and downward BTC price possibilities... maybe a few percentage points on each end, but yeah, every little bit helps, and sometimes in order to remain somewhat in touch with reality and real facts on the ground and how those facts are evolving (possibly a bit in unexpected ways) we do need to account for current and/or recent factual conditions in order to adjust our perspectives from time to time.. and yeah, for me, recent events in the past several weeks cause more bullishness and maybe even more bullishness than expected... but I am also interested to see how the potential resistance in the $750 to $850 price range plays out, because that could be very telling in respect to where we are going in the short term.. and likely even in the long term.... in other words $750 to $850 is "critical".      

I like that link that you provided, matt4054. 

Hopefully, the information in the charts is relatively accurate, and we can look at current levels of the mempool, as well as the fees that appear to be attached to such pending transactions, as compared with historical levels.

When did you finally buy, and what was the price at the time?  Did you go into the BTC investment full bore, or did you invest incrementally?  Do you still hold all of your coins, or do you sell from time to time?

Personal stories can sometimes be instructive, and show some of our own inclinations towards rash conduct - of course we are human (to the extent that we are not bots... hahahaha)

O.k.... March 2013, you have 100BTC... what did you do with those BTC, and did you buy more or sell more or transfer BTC and/or create various new BTC accounts - whether on exchanges or personally held?

My have times changed in the past couple of years, especially.. 


NOT only are there a multitude of ways in and out in the west, there are a lot of less developed locations that have a multitude of ways in and out, as well, and even in the place that don't have a lot of options there are more and more Local bitcoin avenues developing and even possibilities for direct transactions at bitcoin meet-ups - because a broader segment of the population (no where near mass adoption) are holding BTC through wallet apps such as blockchain.info... and Bitcoin ATMs have proliferated pretty well, too (even though their rates may be a bit higher - frequently a 5% to 10% premium from my understanding)

I agree that the topic has become a kind of irrelevant side-tangent, and probably my only point is that such way of expressing yourself brings a false and unnecessary appeal to authority.  There are probably better ways to substantively make assertions, but I agree with you that it seems to be leading everyone including myself into irrelevant weeds.


It seems more relevant in threads that are created for such, but I suppose it comes up in this thread so much because there tends to be a bit of a larger audience and potential to spark some discussion.

I mean even you asserted in op that your intention was to attempt to keep this thread topically related to walls and price and those kinds of matters.. but whatever, we all recognize that this thread goes all over the place as well as the relevant wall and price watching discussions, which also can be part of it's excitement and proliferation.


I think you are exaggerating a bit when you assert "forever."

I don't know the exact history because I am sure it was discussed quite a bit longer than I realized it, but the topic really seemed to get a lot more attention after Gavin began pushing XT in about August or so.  During that time we got a spike up to $502 in early November.. and then it began to get a lot more vocalization in December and then February with Hearnia rage quit.. and then there seemed to also bring some removal of credibility to all of this with the connection of the Wright Satoshi claim and Gavin, which brought some discrediting to Gavin and the issues he was pushing.  So I think that the extensive discussions were only recent.




I think that it is more discrediting of Gavin and the community is kind of coming around to seeing that XT/Classic and some of the related proposals were really sabotage attempts rather than technically necessary. 

I doubt that seg wit and lightning network or thunder or any of these variations are going to resolve these kinds of issues, but we may come to realize that bitcoin is not broken, which seems to had been part of the assumptions of XT and classic and their attempts to change bitcoin governance.


Maybe, we don't really know that.  I mean maybe you are smarter than me, but it seems like we gotta see how things play out with seg wit.  In essence, I think that there is quite a bit of consensus that some day the blockchain limit will need to increase, so no one is really precluding that from being considered, but I seem to have more issues with the presumption that there is something broken in bitcoin and there is some kind of emergency needs to make changes for the sake of change...   That kind of thing does not seem to be good for bitcoin to be able to easily change it... And, anyhow, a lot of the agreed to changes such as seg wit seem to be bringing a lot of increased capacity too... so shouldn't we be looking forward and positive rather than focusing on the negative that is not even an actual issue at the moment?

Yeah, jbreher can get a thousand of you folks or even 10 thousand chiming in this thread, but such voting doesn't really cause a meaningful "we" in the context of his earlier statement. 

You don't achieve consensus and start to talk about "we" want this or "we" want that on a topic by surveying the bitcoin talk threads.. and then saying that what you say represent some kind of meaningful "we."  it seems like a big waste of time to attempt to establish consensus in that kind of manner.

I'm sure adam could do a poll, but there are also other threads on that topic, too, no?

   Further, there are a few bips out there on the topic of hard fork and blocksize limit increase that have been drafted including XT/Classic, and they have largely been rejected or at least not yet passed and/or received any meaningful support...   The topic seems mostly dead or dying, except folks keep bringing it up in order to  continue to argue the point with the wrong folks, including what the fuck good does it do on this particular thread to talk about dead proposals and keep trying to bring them up and suggest that "we" want this and that.. blah blah blah?

Your statement of facts have proven quite questionable in the past, so seemed somewhat inconsistent and like a multiple choice test to me.


Seems like we kind of agree about what immutability means.


I am not asserting to switch anything, and I am not asserting to be any kind of technical expert. 

All I had been asserting prior to your seemingly multiple choice test post was that bitcoin is not broken, and if there are proposals to change bitcoin, then the burden is on those proposing a change to convince TPTB in bitcoinlandia to agree to the change and to get it incorporated into the protocol.. They do that by providing facts and logic otherwise the status quo continues...

Accordingly, we are chugging along in bitcoinlandia and the prices is crashing... Probably going to test $725 again in the next few days, but surely it could take a few weeks too.. I don't really care.  I think bitcoin is doing well in this $400 to $700 range too (but seems like the upward pressures based on bitcoin's ongoing technical soundness and its security as a storage of value are going to cause bitcoin prices to further crash.....                             up).

Is anyone not responsible over the whole bitcoin ecosystem merely because the status quo remains until a change is achieved.  Therefore, if there is no emergency, then there is no need to change the status quo.  There are a large number of developments going on in the bitcoin space, so it would not be fair to imply that anyone is neglecting the bitcoin ecosystem merely because there has been a failure of consensus regarding increasing the blocksize limit and lack of consensus regarding any hardfork, too.





Who's "we"? you got a rock in your pocket.  You know that you keep asserting a kind of we believe it would have been better and asserting a problem... lot's of assumptions in the statement regarding the actual existence of a problem. without meaningful evidence of such.  Repeating to say it does not make it an actual problem.


If there is a future change, then that bridge can be crossed at that time, no?  And, there you go with "we" again.




I have no problem giving the benefit of the doubt in a lot of regards when there are differences of opinion.  In this case, there is actual evidence of attempts to undermine bitcoin, which rises to the level of malevolence.



My understanding is that XT, BU and classic are largely unsupported (and only by a very small minority at this point).  I thought that seg wit was being tested, so your technical awareness may be more in touch with what is going on in what location... whether your knowledge is material or not, may be another question, though.  I have my sceptisms based on my already experiencing your tendencies to exaggerate and misstate things, so I don't really have confidence to rely on some of your factual representations.


Yeah.. antpool is probably going to lose a lot of its support if it sticks with such a ridiculous threatening position.. Let's see how it plays out once seg wit goes live and who adopts and who supports and how much mining power they retain, etc, etc.  In other words, I will believe it when I see it if antpool decides to continue with such a potentially destructive threat when rubber is about to hit the road.


We still need to see how it is going to play out.  I don't claim to be any kind of technical expert, but it seems pretty decent to me, and from what I understand it is mostly uncontroverted by the devs and by the major players even though there are some hold out loud mouths and antpool jihun that is engaging in threats not to support it.. but in the end, my understanding is that it is not really controversial in terms of being an improvement to the protocol.

That's ridiculous, dumbfbrankings.  I have neither admitted nor denied anything nor do I need to engage in such.

  When a topic is largely irrelevant (my bitcoin practices) to the topic at hand (bitcoin walls), a refusal to address such irrelevant topic, and to play into your little game to distract this thread topic into further irrelevant topics does not amount to an admission nor permission to assert that we are good buddies - in which you are attempting to play nice guy in order to bait me into further irrelevant discussions. 

I'm not going there. 

So, in essence i continue to decline elaboration regarding this irrelevancy, which your self-proclamation as a form of license to categorize as permissioned admission remains non-supported.     

Actually, it is nice to see energy and enthusiasm, so I cannot really lecture anyone about that.

My kind of conservative nature may have some to do with my age and maybe a bit to do with my personality, too. 

I don't really necessarily want to get into too many details about my actual personal circumstances, but I have kind of habits when it comes to investing over the years that have fairly profitable for me.. and once I have built a kind of nest egg, there is a certain desire to protect it.

Over the years, I have not always been right about investments, but I know that when younger, there was more of an ability to lose a lot or to not profit much, and then there is time to make up for such losses or lack of profits. 

Possibly bitcoin may be a bit more risky and adventurous than my other investments, I am not sure, but there is a certain amount of interaction and activism that I have embarked upon with bitcoin - and maybe some of it has to do with the excitement of the newness of it all, but also the ability to make adjustments and calculations regarding positions that I take and have taken on a 24/7 basis?  there are plusses and minuses to the ability to trade 24/7.

You know, wow, when I first started with bitcoin, my target was to consider investing into bitcoin somewhere between 5% and 10% of my quasi-liquid assets within about 1 year (taking an initial bite at the matter in the 1st 6 months and not committing for sure to the project), and in fact there are quite a few ways to categorize and calculate assets (and the extent to which those assets are liquid or become liquid with some efforts), and it seems that I was mostly successful with my goal in the first year (which would have brought us to January 2015, which was kind of a low-ish price point for BTC)..

So, anyhow, the matter kinds of plays out in an interesting way because I continue to invest small amounts into bitcoin during the year 2015 and to trade starting in October 2015... but anyhow, BTC price appreciation seems to have brought my allocation in BTC to around 30%.. and I kind of accounted for the possibility that BTC prices could appreciate, but I did not work out all of the details in my head about how to proceed if such were to occur... and currently, my plan is to allow additional appreciation in BTC and to kind of attempt to offset some of the downside risk of that growing allocation by playing around with the allocation of dollars and fiat within the part that I consider to be my BTC portfolio.

Currently, my BTC portfolio is at 92.3% BTC and 7.7% fiat, and I have even created a chart of BTC allocation target lists, that I may need to tweak again from time to time in the event that I change my mind about some of the matters, whether I am bullish or bearish in my views. 

My current projected BTC allocation chart looks like this:

 
Price                 BTC Allocation (remainder in fiat)
$200-350      = 97-99.5%
$350-450       = 96-99%
$450-550       =  92-98%
$550-650       = 90-95%
$650-850        = 85-93%
$850-1,250        = 84-92%
$1,250-2,000      =    83-91%
$2,000-3,000       =    80-90%
$3,000-5,000         = 55-84%
$5,000-10,000   = 50-80%

I don't see how my bitcoin related practices are even relevant to various topics at hand, so in this context I'm not even going to discuss what I do or don't do  within this kind of discussion, because it really does not matter in the context of various points that I have made in my recent posts.  

In this regard, in recent posts, I believe that I was merely asserting general principles regarding how bitcoin is more decentralized, immutable and permissionless than Ethereum...  

We do not really need to get into any major compare and contrast of Ethereum  or discuss how potentially wonderful Ethereum is for some of the Ethereum enthusiasts because this seems to be off-topic within a bitcoin discussion thread, last time I checked... so we seem to have beaten the quasi-potentially relevant comparison/contrast aspects of BTC/ETH to death, no?
 

Some people continue to keep bringing up this whole scaling issue and to suggest that there is some kind of obligation to either consider a hard fork or an increase in the blocksize limit prior to seg wit coming out. 

It tends to be a kind of discussion that presumes that there are technical emergency problems with bitcoin that have to be fixed right away and also it assumes that governance needs to be fixed in such a way to make bitcoin more easily changed.  I think that those are crap assumptions that are more attempts at creating divisiveness rather than meaningful attempt to discuss what developments are actually positively taking place in bitcoin and continuing to be worked on. 

Sure maybe at some point there will be a need to actually increase the blocksize limit, but seg wit is coming first, and is going to cause a lot of improvements and changes and also there is likely little to no justification for conducting an actual hardfork, unless the situation happens to be noncontroversial.. and at this time, the blocksize increase question seems to be controversial with the vast majority believing that it is not needed at the moment and that seg wit needs to be rolled out first.

Look at you.. coming up with a distracting multiple choice test.   

I'm talking about the whole system in which blocks cannot be easily edited by the whole system of computers... .. possibly there are various weaknesses contained therein, such as we do not really know exactly who all the miners are  and  the devs are actual people who have levels of influence in attempting to persuade consensus and adoptions of changes to the existing protocol that was initially developed by a currently unknown person or persons... at least not publicly known.. but anyhow, regardless of your multiple choice distracting quiz, I think that you probably understood my point - but you want to get caught up in the weeds of nonsense.

Sure, yeah, a kind of addiction, which is not necessarily a negative thing.  It may be better characterized as a time-sucking hobby, but anyhow, BTC price movements and dynamics in the crypto space are mesmerizing.. and more  mesmerizing the more that guys have invested into it.

I think that I have a very decent system in place to protect my BTC investment, yet I think that the volatility of BTC does still require me to maintain some vigilance over my investment and to protect it from downside risk, which may not be the case as much if my holdings considerably appreciate in value (which is seeming to be likely in the coming weeks).. but yeah, cannot get too smug about expecting something that has not yet happened.. .. so gotta continue with guarded optimism.. aka a kind of addiction.     

I'm not trying to denigrate anyone's perspective regarding what is good for them; however, there is a certain kind of connotation that goes with being "new wealthy elite, gentlemen"  Of course, if the price goes up 1,000x or more, then smaller investments are going to make someone considerably well off.

Nonetheless, like I suggested, I believe that this thread did start out with bitcoin's less than $10 and many of the then subscribers owning more then 10k btc.. So there is some perspective regarding whether we are targeting being  "new wealthy elite, gentlemen" from an international or western perspective or if we are considering the same from a location that does not take as much capital in order to be considered a  "new wealthy elite, gentlemen."

I think that is part of the reason why I also suggested that people attempt to put in as much as they can afford and without necessarily leveraging (though sometimes there could be additional profits from leveraging, so there is some gambling involved with taking such a leveraged approach to attempt to achieve  "new wealthy elite, gentlemen" goals)