That's what most people don't get either

Fiat money and financial system based on fiat money are infinitely more difficult than Bitcoin in almost every aspect of them. Even on this very forum there are heated debates springing up now and then about how fiat money is actually created and by whom exactly

Some say it is via Central Bank printing money as it sees appropriate at its sole discretion, some claim new money is injected via credit by regular commercial banks. Apart from that, there is no agreement if this new money gets printed out of thin air or it is in fact a collateralized form of money and has some backup

The technical, gory details of actual money circulation in the fiat world are not even slightly touched on here because you can hardly find just two people across the board more or less familiar with the whole process and then make them discuss the matter. I did in fact try exactly that once (and failed)

These are far and few in between

They are just sticking out as outliers, that's why they create such an impression. But that's not my point. In today's world investing and being able to invest profitably is a sort of must-have. It doesn't require so much technical knowledge (e.g. knowing Bitcoin's technical aspects) as understanding the market in which it exists. Bitcoin for them will be an investment asset but that's not a bad thing as it keeps Bitcoin popular


These are outliers obviously

Okay, guys, here's an explanation for the inquiring minds as to what OP means. And what he actually means by his cryptic posts in this thread is quite simple really. By 129 unprofitable days he obviously means the period of time since the late November 2017 when Bitcoin had first risen above 13k (and then proceeded to an ATH of 20k) till mid-January 2018 when it fell below 13k. If you add to this period the time when Bitcoin was above 13k this year, you will definitely get a couple of months which could be related to as non-profitable days in the entire history of Bitcoin from today's perspective

Whether it makes any sense at all is another question, though

It is often said and then repeated that Bitcoin is not for the masses and definitely not for old-timers as it is too difficult to understand:


But how many of us actually understand how Bitcoin works internally, even partially?

I don't think that many. The truth is, it is not required to be a certified mechanical engineer (or whatever) to drive a car. In some cases you don't even need a driving license. For example, the British queen drives without one and she is an old-timer without reservations. Long story short, you don't need to understand the technology behind Bitcoin to invest in it, though you definitely should understand how the market works. But once you get the hang of it, you are no longer tied to, or constrained by, Bitcoin specifically (and its technology). In other words, everyone should be able to buy low and sell high (okay, invest profitably) these days, and there should be no exception for old-timers, and still less for those to become them one day (read, us)

Trading is essentially a form of reality check for us all

We may form some ideas about future price action (mostly delusions even if correct) based on our prior beliefs which essentially have nothing to do with market and its laws. And what adds insult to injury here is that we actually feel being right about our decisions even if they were proven wrong time and again in the past. We just can't first understand and then internalize (i.e. make it an integral part of our belief system) this sad discrepancy because it is so strikingly against everything we have been internally hard-wired for and equipped with by Mother Nature

In truth, martingale could be made profitable

But profits will be pathetic bordering on outright ridiculous and thus definitely not worth the dime and effort other than for a purely academic interest (e.g. to quantify how much you can actually earn in a more or less safe way). I remember as a few years ago I was trying to find the optimal setup (let's call it a Holy Grail of gambling), and I was able to earn less than 1 doge daily for a balance of over 1000 doges without risking the whole amount (I mean, too much). Obviously, there would eventually be a long enough losing streak to wipe me out but I didn't encounter it during the period I had been testing this approach (for about a week or so). Then I just lost interest

I don't think it is impossible since as back as 2013-2014 Coinbase (a US-based company as far as I remember) had been running a massive ad campaign giving out free bitcoins (not literally bitcoins, more like 0.001 BTC but you get the point), so it is not completely impossible that a significant part of the American population registered with this wallet. There likely were other promotions of this kind as Coinbase is not the only pebble on the American beach (or coast)

Now all these people seemingly made it into statistics

I tend to disagree with this view

Bitcoin indeed has a "supply mechanism" built in which adds new coins to the net balance every 10 minutes or so. But this supply is absolutely predictable and has been so ages since day one. In other words, the market can live with that and effectively price the new coins in. If the supply of new coinage was completely random and arbitrary in both amount and time, it would likely heavily affect the price dynamic but since it is not, it doesn't

The validity of this assumption can be seen with altcoins such as Litecoin which has a similar supply pattern (in fact, a potentially more disruptive one). And even if it is less stable and more volatile than Bitcoin on its own, we still don't see the disruptive effects of the constant increase in the coin base as there are simply none

It is not going to work out like that

If one is predisposed to addiction (and I think there's not a lot of difference among numerous types of addiction, psychologically), the best a potential addict can do is to simply stay away from gambling altogether. He won't be able to stick to this strategy of small bets just because he doesn't have it in him (so it's better not to risk it). On the other hand, if one can keep on playing using small amounts for some time, he can as well bet larger sums as the risk of developing or contracting an addiction will be minimal

I guess Litecoin is still there

And if we compare the recent bottoms of both coins (i.e. 22 dollars vs 3300), Litecoin is still outperforming Bitcoin overall. And this remains true even if we take into account that Litecoin has been losing to Bitcoin last weeks. Actually, with Litecoin halving coming in a couple days, it will likely surge again (and this surge may have already started, by the way). To sum it up, not all altcoins are born equal

Yeah, but that's the whole point

If the said "long run" is longer than your life (well, longer than you will be rolling dice), does it really matter? Then again, this topic is more of an academic tune, which is to say, it deals more with conceptual matters rather than mundane ones (but still). For example, it is typically accepted as true that an infinite bankroll in the absence of artificial restraints like max bet amount put in place by the casino will beat the house edge through martingale. But even with a bankroll growing fast enough, it is still possible, at least as long as your escape velocity is in the positive (i.e. with each win your death streak becomes longer)

This is hype, just hype

It is in fact quite wondrous that people are so inclined to believe in this type of hype. Maybe, because they just want to believe in something? Bitcoin is kinda obsolete already, gold is just retarded, so people want a new kid on the block to refresh their lives. And it is even more fascinating that it has become a subject of discussion in the US Congress. There's something fishy about this coin, something which looks and feels like a con, not a real deal

I want to try out the approach described in this thread. But to arrive at any definitive conclusion, I need casinos which allow betting via API, and the casino should allow fast bets at that, i.e. not like one roll a second but certainly faster than that. Obviously, it should also be possible to run the longest streaks by doubling the initial amount, therefore doges seem to be the best option in this regard (with the minimum possible amount determined by the coin lowest denomination). If you know of such casinos, please share your knowledge here

Please note that this thread is not intended to discuss whether it is worth trying (it is)

Well, it looks more like you can't be successful in gambling

At least, as long as we are talking about games of chance, i.e. not poker and similar games where skill matters as much as pure luck (if not more). Long story short, if by success you mean earning profits (i.e. not having fun or anything to that tune), gambling is the last thing you should stick to

And it doesn't really matter whether you accept defeat or not. What matters is how long you play, and the longer you play, the higher are your chances of losing all. To put it differently, you can win only by chance, and that pretty much means a one-off event (read, hit and run, and never look back). In short, gambling is for entertainment purposes only

It seems to remain an open question still

In fact, when you have already accumulated a significant amount of wealth with some less risky asset or assets (like government bonds, gold, etc), your appetite for riskier assets is likely to increase, which is somewhat counterintuitive. It's something like the law of diminishing marginal utility applied to wealth accumulation. According to this law, it can be said that the more wealth you already gathered, the less interested you become in gathering it with your current instruments as you will necessarily be earning less and less percentage wise over years. So you are kinda pushed towards riskier investments and assets which could offer you a more satisfying percentage (compared to what you have already secured)

You can't get 1% daily with martingale

Unless you are risking your whole balance, which you will lose sooner or later (rather sooner than later), in matter of days really. You can try to gamble with doges in order to gather statistics which amount (percentage wise) you could earn daily without sacrificing your balance at the end of the day (literally). I've been running martingale for a week by now at wolf.bet with free doges (there you can run it faster than at primedice, for example), but it is yet too early to tell which is a safe bet and how much you could actually earn

The word was double-quoted to avoid possible misunderstanding and confusion. Anyway, if that gives you peace of mind, substitute reinvesting with increasing your balance


It is not only that

All legit casinos have an upper limit on how much you can bet, and many of them have a lower limit as well (which is different from the lowest denomination of the coin gambled). That basically puts an impenetrable barrier, a roadblock of sorts, as to how much you can earn (or lose, for that matter) even if you had a drainless fountain of wealth. Apart from that, your bets are also temporally limited, i.e. you can't make more bets per unit of time as preset by the casino

All that, taken together, severely limits how much you can earn even using the most riskless martingale settings. For example, when you are using doges, which allow you to withstand very long losing streaks practically impossible in real life, you don't need to have insane amounts of money to take advantage of that, but your earnings, while kind of guaranteed, will still be dust anyway. On the other hand, if you just like seeing your balance grow, that's pretty much it

I'm not really sure that gambling is for people to make money unless we are talking about professional poker players and their likes, or any other games which apart from luck also involve a certain amount of skill. Chance games are about entertainment only, and if you somehow come to think differently, it may cost you dear. Regarding casino owners caring only about  their pockets, isn't that as true with respect to casino players who equally don't care about the pockets of casino owners?

If you are after money, gambling is the last thing you should be looking into

There is already such thing in existence today

It is called on-chain betting and used by decentralized apps (more specifically, decentralized casinos) running on blockchains like TRON and EOS (not sure about the latter though). All bets (and consequently all seeds for the rolls) are written on the blockchain and bets can be checked and analyzed for provably fair anytime. In other words, they are truly guaranteed to be fair, and there is for a casino to skew the odds n their favor above and beyond the official house edge (or how it is called there)

Obviously, it is not about people who bought Bitcoin

As it is more about those who mine it, i.e. miners, and I'm very skeptical about the costs of production anywhere close to 19k or even 13k. Indeed, it costs money to make a bitcoin but if the production costs are around 5k on average (which is an accepted figure), then at prices over or around 10k miners can only sell 1 bitcoin out of 2 mined and still remain profitable en masse, while keeping the second bitcoin to themselves (which also adds to price growth)