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1. Bitcoin is a unique asset class that allows Americans to diversify investments and therefore may allow America to better weather financial storms. The 2008 financial crisis showed how the banking industry companies are tightly coupled and have a poorly understood interactive complexity. These are the exact attributes identified by Charles Perrow in his seminal work "Normal Accidents" as creating a system that is prone to significant negative events. Bitcoin's worldwide scope and weak connections to the traditional financial industry make it an independent system that is likely to remain unaffected by systemic financial industry crises.
1a. Banks today make most of their money in fees. They are profiting from the financial difficulties or careless mistakes make by working Americans. Bitcoin does not levy these fees.
2. Bitcoin is a worldwide phenomenon and so government intervention is limited in its possible scope. Excessive regulation will simply drive companies elsewhere. Excessive paperwork and registration fees (for MSB certification) is ALREADY driving legitimate bitcoin companies out of the USA (Tangible Cryptography, etc). Regulation is difficult and possibly unconstitutional due to the unique digital nature of the system -- given that a Bitcoin has no intrinsic value is transferring one simply "speech"? (etc) I'm sure Patrick knows these details much better than I, but the point is to throw out some FUD about the efficacy and value of any bill passed -- because nobody wants to author a stupid bill -- not to make an authoritative determination.
2a. The MSB framework may make sense for a billion dollar company handling a trust-and-debt-based currency, but does not make sense for a cryptographically secure asset based system capable of micro-payment transfers. To remain competitive in this critical emerging industry, a bill should be passed in the same philosophy as the one legalizing "kickstarter" projects. This bill should create a single federal MSB registration system covering companies that wish to handle digital currencies below a certain value threshold.
3. The silk road headlines giving a USD value on the bust tremendously exaggerate the quantity of drugs because many of the coins were earned when Bitcoin was 1/50 or less of its current value ($300 vs $5).
3a. Arm yourself with lots of statistics about USD drug trade.
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good time to buy right now? opinions? Or is the correction not done?
take a look at the 6 month gox or bitstamp chart. You can imagine a line from jun 30 to about oct 15. I'll call this L1. It is kind of the baseline trend -- perhaps how fast bitcoin's value is intrinsically increasing during this bull cycle. Anything below this line is a good buy. But post "bubble", bitcoin tends to finish 2-5x higher then previously so waiting for this line may never happen. Now you can draw another steeper line from oct 15 to approx Nov 1. Let's call this the L2 baseline. This is the speculation trendline. Anything faster than this will indicate an impending blow-off (which is why we are seeing one now). Now ask yourself if you think that this pull-back is the end of a major bubble cycle (like the 2 we had previously), or just a correction? If you think its the end of the cycle, hold out for something near or below L1. If you think L2 will continue for another month or more, then buy now ($250 to $280 on bitstamp). Personally, I think L2 will continue. We haven't risen far enough over the prior ATH to shake out lots of coins. And in the 2012Q1 "bubble" pullbacks of 20-40% similar to this one were practically a weekly occurrence due to lack of fiat on the exchanges and manipulator activity (as proven by simultaneous DDOS attack). Sometimes it is better to talk in time rather than percentage to gain some perspective and calm the panic feelings -- we've "corrected" by less then a week, its nothing. Also, keep in mind that in an exponential increasing situation NOW is almost always a good time to buy. I mean even the guys who bought in in April at $266 are now seeing $327 (comparing gox to gox). They are 22% up -- that's an awesome yearly return for anything that is not Bitcoin! So don't wait too long if you think Bitcoin's exponential adoption is going to continue. You just can't fight an exponential  , and so even as a trader you should be in fiat < 5% of the time. |
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But make no mistake, in the end everybody is in it to eventually cash out.
Maybe many people but not everybody. Some would like to see the experiment largely succeed and for Bitcoin to become a widespread, useful tool. For them, bitcoins are a form of cash. Yes but those people bought or generated a few coins once upon a time and see how it turns out. I'd say the people that buy at regular intervals are pretty much excluded from this group. And what makes you come to this conclusion? Alot of people invest in bitcoin for longterm value storage and are not envisioning cashing out, at least not until 2020. I know I am. see then it's 2020 for you. The conclusion comes in hindsight, people who are prone to frequent buying should be prone to frequent trading, which includes selling. There are bound to be exceptions but in general I think this is true. I swear you've become the Proudhon bear. Of COURSE the point is to cash out some day. In other words, the point is to buy goods and services with your money. What other purpose does money have? Dying with a positive balance (ignoring some careful giving to your descendants of course) is just a waste of a last big party! But when one person is spending his money another is saving his. Judging by how Camp-Bx has been trailing (its small but only USA so its an interesting data point) that's what's been happening for the last few months... US savers are "cashing out" and Chinese are saving. Its working just how $ works. |
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ATH on gox and near it on bitstamp... we seem to have recovered from the dump extremely quickly. I think that the DDOS trick may no longer be effective... and its existence on btc-china implies that the pullback was artificial (although MUCH needed, so thanks!). Some manipulator is likely looking at a painful loss  |
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dont think so, but connection to bitcoinity is gone. If you got to the home page, https://vip.btcchina.com/, you can see trades happening by refreshing and looking at the price and the volume on the top bar... looks like the crash was "caught" at around 2450 |
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ATH HAT TRICK!!!! (all 3 exchanges hitting simultaneously)
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My sell order went automatic at 350 and just sold all my coins in Gox...
Profit taken.
So... you now have an unredeemable electron-based note that gives you the right to lots of toilet paper that Americans currently think are valuable? |
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Gox + Stamps + BTC-china = about 13k coins...
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Clearly, anyone who knows anything about a singularity knows that Bitcoin is not one. But it is either worth nothing or quite a lot. If it's worth quite a lot, it will have to rise to get there. That in itself is a recipe for irrational exuberance and bubbles and busts. But there will be an underlying rise.
Your assertion that this bust will be so much worse than the others is just a different take on "It's different this time" and is more an expression of your bearish nature than reflecting anything real.
I see it as a singularity actually -- perhaps not in the physics sense but as a singular event. Ignoring the momentary drops into the 50s and 60s, an investment when it was priced USD 5-10 (or .05 to 1 for the even earlier adopters) is worth 25 - 50x the investment after. For anyone who made a non-trivial investment, it will be the largest share of their holdings no matter how much fiat is put in now. Same thing now. For anyone who bought in the flat around $100 or buys up to about 500 -- that's going to be their main holdings when we hit 1000, 5 or 10k. WRT moving up so fast, it really IS different this time. The engine is firing on more cylinders -- USA, Europe, Asia. I feel that the last "bubble" was mostly driven by USA. Of course Europe was a major player but rallies occurred during USA day time (mostly). In contrast this 65+ rally seemed to be USA, 130+ rally was pulled by Asia, but now the Second Market fund, Canada ATM news, etc is also driving the exchanges up 24 hrs a day. Note how major psychological barriers are just blown through -- for every barrier 1500, 2000 CNY, 200,250,300USD, 200EU, there are 2 other currencies where that level is irrelevant. Africa, India, and much of South America are still missing. They will be instrumental for the next one... The question is, "will this difference translate into a sustainable rally at these rates?" I think the answer is that it will be sustainable at higher rates, but of course in the end there will be a blow-off. There always is. Personally, I'm hoping for a daily-pullback today, I think we need one... But think on this: Has there EVER been something that hit its exponential adoption curve simultaneously worldwide before? |
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I was kidding, it was a nod to proudhon.
I'm of the opinion that next bear market will be the most devastating and the longest one so far (worse than 2011) because everyone is caught up in the belief that if only they hold long enough, they cannot possibly lose out on BTC, no matter their entry price. Every dip is a buying opportunity etc.
Furthermore, the current bubble developed very quickly after only 7 months between former alltime high. So, it's a bubble on top of a bubble in the same year.
We can talk about that once we actually top out. So far, we haven't even doubled from the 266 high.
I'm of the opinion that the time elapsed between each bubble will be shorter and shorter, each will be more 'violent' and price will go up/down more drastically until we reach the 'climax' or real price discovery. Then after that more bubbles will come, but the price will increase less and less each time, and time will be longer. We are far away for the 'climax', i think at least two more bubbles are needed. Just my 2shatoshis The truth is that bubble 1 was more violent than bubble 2, (we went up x16, from 2 to 32), so I'd expect bubble 3 to be less violent than bubble 2 and 1. Regarding singularity, is a beautiful *theoric* concept, but its painfully clear to me that nor the protocol nor the infrastructure can scale to accomodate such a "singularity", and thus I consider it pretty much of a fairy tale. Anyhow, I will be obviously happy if it happens  Really, I feel like we went from 5 to 266 in bubble #2. 5 was a long period of stability... in April 202 so that actually x50. The only real pullback between then and the top was the pirate disaster, and that is easily seen as artificial. That is, its a external event that could have been triggered anytime -- not really related to the trend. |
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So, one question: for how many in here buying BTC has been the best financial decision EVER??
My wife bought when the price was £7.80. She spent £5k and bought 641 coins, worth about £130k or so now. This was probably the 2nd best decision she ever made (after answering "I do") I have bought a small number of coins from time to time, but my 2nd best decision ever was to buy a bunch of 5870s back in January 2001. No man, her best decision was buying BTC, YOURS was marrying her! |
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the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, nasdaq=3055, Bitcoin=5.4): Bitcoin is 309.00 (299.45 btcChina in USD). Gold is 1296.40. Nasdaq is 3886.00 Bitcoin: 5622.22% (5445.30%) Gold: -23.29% Nasdaq: 27.20% Gold Diff: 7360% advantage BitcoinNasdaq Diff: 4399% advantage BitcoinEPIC! Sorry for the delay... just returned from india Cypherdoc used to talk about adoption driven by price rise, now with the price rising, I am starting to see how this could make sense, in a new way.
I am inspired by the Oz Tomcar company which recently started accepting Bitcoin, the reasoning being: a lot of merchants will conclude from the price performance of Bitcoin, that there must be quite a few people getting rich with their Bitcoins out there, and want to cater to their needs(even one single order could be big for them!), this, combined with the fact that the setting up for accepting Bitcoin costs only trivially, and the potential publicity brought by such a move, could motivate lots of merchants to jump in the bandwagon.
Just check out the ads on bitcoin charts... a year ago they were VERY different! |
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1st conference bangalore mid Dec!
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arb breaks down when the 3+ day fiat transfer times could lose you $60 per coin or 20% as compared to just holding BTC...
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Somehow my intuition tells me these coins are either going to be hoarded by casual purchasers that want a bitcoin position but don't want to go through the hassle of exchange verification, or spent right away. But they won't be SOLD for fiat on an exchange by the purchaser. Either situation is bullish for bitcoin... |
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Wall down. I repeat, wall DOWN.
market sell incoming? Ahh NOOOOOOO!! You SOLD your trading stash didn't you!!!! We are going to be subjected to another 3 months of bearish comments... kill me now |
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Possible, but I wouldn't bet on it.
We're in a bubble. When it pops, it gets us to 150. Bubble pop takes us to 2x the previous ATH: $1 -> $32 -> $2 $32 -> $266 -> $60 $266 -> ? why pick 32 as the beginning? picking 7 (pirate dump bottom) or 10 (Nov bottom before the unbroken increase) makes much more sense. EDIT: ah ok, he's picking the prior ATH as the beginning. Interesting but doesn't really capture the full bull market phase |
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Looks like the wall is down
guess he met his buying target... |
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tanking
be calm... up $20+ in one day was too much excitement... a pullback is a good thing at this point. |
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