You have been invested quite long. Has this strategy paid off, compared to simple buy&hold?

Finland mentioned in a positive context.

 

Does not hold water. Deduction:
- 20th century has seen more people-lifeyears than all the previous history combined
- The material living standard has been higher also
- Gold's purchasing power has been constant or decreasing
- 20th century production figures are quite well documented.

lol i read some nazifiction book where the nazis had retreated to antarctica and spent their time extracting gold from seawater

Karen says that there is at least 500,000 tons of gold, all conventional figures say about 160,000 tons. The latter figure is imho rather well researched from the mining output in 20th century - before which only a fraction of the total gold existing was produced. Do you have some credible theory, how the gold aboveground could be so much higher figure?

wtf I post a prediction 6 months ago and since it did not come true you still call me names get a life punk

It is possible that we have seen the top for 2013! There is a resistance in $166 and most exchanges are struggling to overcome it. The most bullish scenario imo would be to spend 2 weeks here and then blast on towards ATH.

Rich people may have some flaw in their thought models, let's call it "linear thinking". Their current modus operandi rewards them every day with position of power and luxury of life. It is impossible extremely hard to think that something created outside their sphere of influence, with a market cap of just 1 million or 1 billion, would be so crucial to them.

I know a guy who was not rich to begin with, upper middle class maximum, but he already thought so linearly so as to dismiss bitcoin when it was small. "I don't make investments to such small things." When price had gone up 10 times, he finally bought, and invested a conservative 1% of his net worth. This gave him about 1/10000 of all bitcoins, which is clearly a large interest, since it cannot be diluted.

Bitcoin price rose 1000% before the guy in the example understood that it does not matter, how much you pay for your bitcoins, what matters is how many you have. If a person is 100 times richer, and has similar thinking, and buys 100 times higher, he will have the same number of coins at the same relative investment (1% of his worth), and same relative position in bitcoin economy (1/10000 of all coins).

Most of the powercenters in bitcoin economy will be un-establishment. This is not because bitcoin is contraband, but because the mind models of the established people (with few exceptions) prevent them from purchasing bitcoin early on. In my estimation there is only about 10 people who have BTC100,000. The club is still open, but not too many admissions are available.

It is crashing  We are almost at 5, and as a large holder of USD this troubles me.

This property defines whether something is Money or not. It is impossible to buy up all bitcoins, or all gold, or all silver in existence, using fiat currency as payment. Long before you can corner all the supply, the exchange rate has shot to the stratosphere and the purchasing medium ceases to be a valid medium of payment i.e. is destroyed.

Of course you can try to corner e.g. all Picassos, and you may end up paying very high price for the last ones, but dollar is not destroyed in the process because it is still needed to function as money.

The reason why an attempt to corner gold, silver or bitcoins will destroy the dollar, is that both the object of the corner and the medium of payment are possible to work as media of exchange. The corner sends the value of the monetary stock of the gold/silver/bitcoins so high that automatic economic adjustment mechanisms debit this from the dollar, the value of which is thus lowered. (The aggregate total purchasing power of all money in existence cannot grow unbounded.)

The upper bound for the value of 1 BTC in this year's USD is 1-5 million (given finite earth, etcetc,). Realistic positive long term scenario is 300k. If the whole crypto or BTC fails in some unforeseen way, it can be worth so little that it is impractical to trade.

 Let's put the possibilities in log scale (price of BTC in current USD):

10^7 = 10 million. Total value of bitcoins would be on par with total value of the Earth. This is not possible and this scenario is therefore utopistic.

10^6 = 1 million. All bitcoins would be about as valuable as the M1 monetary stock of a top-notch fiat currency such as the USD. This is in the realm of possibility, but clearly the most positive scenario imaginable, and therefore unlikely.

10^5 = 100 000. Bitcoins would be more valuable than all the silver ever mined, but less valuable than all the gold, and much less valuable than many fiat currencies of today (total value about 1000 billion).

10^4 = 10 000. This will be reached ??

10^3 = 1000. This will be reached ??

10^2 = 100. This was reached 4/2013.

10^1 = 10. This was reached in 6/2011.

10^0 = 1. This was reached in 2/2011.

10^-1 = 0.1. Minimum value that bitcoin has ever traded in an exchange. At that time there were no actual uses for the currency.

10^-2 = 0.01. This would render all the bitcoin economy worth about 100,000 USD. As this value is spread between millions of users, nobody has a big enough stock to have any incentive to care about bitcoin, and the exchanges and eventually even the network would likely grind to a halt. This is therefore an impossible long term scenario. Altcoins die if they cannot overcome this barrier or fall through it.

The market is very volatile because market participants need to assess probabilities to scenarios, which are not close to each other in outcome. In contrast to stock market, where there are reasonable bounds as to what a certain stock's value might be, with bitcoin there are only absolute bounds, 8 orders of magnitude from each other. If the market would reach consensus that in 1% probability, bitcoin's value is 1 million (and 99% probability it is zero), the price would explode to the upside as any price short of $10000 per bitcoin is a bargain with positive expected value.

Bitcoin is not in a bubble but in a genuine price discovery phase. Not longer than a few hours ago, I told that I expect bitcoin to rise to 4 digits before next summer. My friend's guess was $15. Both are preparing accordingly.

I think this is a reasonable tax. It hits the wealth, which is more concentrated than income. It is fairer than inflation, because the rich can avoid inflation by buying hard assets, whereas the poor cannot. The poor need not pay much at all, but would be notified of the destructive policy of gov debt.

 

How much did you make?

My similar SEPA came also through yesterday. They had charged 30 € in costs.

The post-crash high of 166 and old ATH of 266 did not see meaningful volume, so they might be cleared with surprisingly little effort. Two weeks of trying to assault 32 was imho "surprisingly little" but this may be even less. That said, I would be more confident if we retraced at least 10% from now, and also took several attempts to beat 266.

There is a high probability that we are in the early stages of a megamove taking us 10-100 times higher. It does not make too much sense to unload BTC to strength in this early phase of the move. I don't plan to sell until 4 digits and/or if it starts to look unsustainable and/or I have an insatiable need for purchasing something. Because of this general analysis, I will skip even daytrading. There is just too high risk (to miss a part of the move with part of the stash, holding fiat) compared to expected reward.

Money changing is the original activity of the banks, and even Jesus condemned it.

We will have 5 of them in Finland next month. The first will be in a premier location in the heart of the capital city.

Even if you bought LTC at the absolute low of 0.0025, you have barely made 6x your investment, I checked it has been around 0.015. Considering that 90% of altcoins have reverted to zero, purchasing every one of them with equal amounts, would have yielded a loss of -40%. Not to mention the time it takes to play with them, and the illiquidity and some legal concerns.

Don't get me wrong, everybody is free to do what they want but most choose to spend their time on activities that do not maximize profit. (One thing that I completely don't understand is why any noob would go into mining now).

BTC is so big it won't die because of a fork. But you are right that LTC is the silver currency at present. Perhaps I should buy some. Do you have any idea when it reaches bottom?