It'll continue to grow, but just be aware that this is an adult game with big players.  You can expect more whippings like the one over the past few days in the future.   And once the players can't shake off the fleas by taking the market down 190 Billion, they'll take it down 230 billion, 300 billion, etc... they'll let the market linger in the swamps for longer days, weeks, and maybe even months before they move the market back the other way.  You need to be cash ready to play this game, no different than any stock market.   

That's the wonderful thing about btc, it's not a company or stock listed on some exchange.   You can drive it down to pennies but you can't get rid of it through traditional market actions.   The loss of value in the last couple of days was roughly the equivalent of the stock market crash that kicked off the 1929 great depression in the US in adjusted dollars.   However today we've had a nice bounce back and the machine is still running with virtually all cryptos green across the board today.

All it means is that there will be a boom in other currencies.   Not BCH or Ripple though, just my opinion. 

Been using ETH as much as BTC in the past few weeks.   

It was a pretty good day today.   

Not anonymous but much more plausibly deniable than most modern forms of payment.   Bitcoin plus a good attorney or two is all you need.   

Yeah, there's no need for you to have banks that hold your bitcoin (and then loan that out to other people... which is the whole point of being a bank).

What there needs to be more of is bullet proof bitcoin exchanges and wallet services (yes, offline and air gap is better, I'm talking about for mainstream adoption and also for daily trading).   One thing that hurts btc and crypto in general is the occasional news of exchanges being hacked for huge losses.   From that point of view, the confidence in some exchanges is about equal to that of banks in the old west of America.   Yeah, it's a bank, but it seems like it might be robbed at any time.

Whales never leave the water.   They surface and dive, surface and dive.    Small fish and plankton typically spend their entire lives running (swimming) for their lives in panic. 

For me, much of it is psychological.   I know that deep down, the btc holdings I have now were at one time worth only a few thousand US$.   So it's always at the back of my mind that maybe I should just sell it all to take the money and run.   I don't do that of course (instead of opting for small cash ins and long term gains), but I think a lot of early and middle adopters sometimes participate in a heard mentality kind of thinking.   Like watching the wildebeests in Kusini.   If something minor spooks the heard, they all start running (and cashing in in this case).  

It can be all of those things.   It depends on where you got on, got off, or perhaps even fell off the boat.   It depends on whether the music keeps playing or if you're left without a chair when the music stops.

For me, it's been a commodity and currency.  I've been paid and continue to receive income in btc.  It's been somewhat of a security (as I have plenty sitting around doing nothing hoping for long term capital gains), but at the same time I don't trust it completely as a long term security as opposed to say T-bills or something like that.   If I had a terminal illness, I'd probably convert it all to something more tangible for my wife and kids before I got too ill.

It can't really be a scam to me because of the amounts I've converted from bitcoin to other assets, so whatever happens, I still have those assets.... but that's not to say that if one day it's revealed to be rigged or an NSA honey pot (not saying that it's likely either), then yes, I suppose you could still call it a scam.

As long as your investments don't impact your life (that is: you aren't investing with leveraged funds, don't have debt obligations, you aren't using your kids education funds), it's not really a big deal to see the market dive.   It's just a paper loss.   Billionaires lose millions and often hundreds of millions on a daily basis.   While most of us are not in that class yet, it's the same concept.   As long as you manage the other aspects of your life properly, it's not a heartbreak to be up or down a few hundred thousand in a few days time.   That said, just like stocks, there is no guarantee that any particular security will recover.  Zero is always a possibility.

Yesterday was a red day but if you look at the big picture it's been a record year by any standard.   

Yeah, every single bch I've ever found lingering in my wallets I've converted to btc and eth.

Not feasible.   My income is mostly automated.   It costs too much to shutdown and restart.

2017 has been incredible.   I think that 2018 will be another breakout year. 

Looks like someone lost their lunch money today.   

Looking at the big picture though, it's be a wonderful year as a whole.   For those of us who have been since at least the beginning of the year (and even more so for those us who have been in for a few years), whatever happens it'll likely be a 1000+% year.    Compare to around 5-6% returns on my real estate holdings and around 1.5-1.75% in interest income from my various traditional bank holdings.   Stocks, okay a little better at round 9-12% but still, crypto and especially btc still win by a landslide.   The key is to periodically pay yourself a dividend (convert to fiat) from crypto when it's up.   Don't depend too much on some pie in the sky goal in the long run.  Don't panic when it's down.    

So from this past week on the various threads, the lessons learned have been:  better to NOT sell your house, better to NOT max out your credit cards, better to NOT quit your job,.... but maybe, it would have been a better idea to buy that Ferrari after all.   

 

Ready to increase my holdings as soon as this bottoms out.   This is a great opportunity for those with cash reserves.

As long as it stays above $800, I'm going to HOSC.

Past performance is not an indication of future results as they say.