I've reduced my exposure by about 50% for this reason. We may just bump up through 90, and if we do, the price will run up a bit... but to be honest there seems to be a bit of resistance -- I think people are mindful of the long weekend ahead, particularly with what happened last weekend.

"On the third day Bitcoin rose again" -- My bet is Monday will be an excellent day to buy.

A bit of a horizontal run will actually do us wonders. The crackpot bears with their "zoomed out chart, therefore crash", will look a bit silly if we go sideways for a few days.

That would be the ideal scenario I think:Would make for some real rocket fuel next week

I think it could go either way today.

China is jittery and following Gox movement, which is also jittery.

I think given what happened last weekend, many will be waiting for this long weekend to pass to see what happens. 4 days of potentially low liquidity. Should be a good buying opportunity on Easter Monday IMO.

I've reduced my exposure by about 1/2 until then.

I think we'll slice through $100 easily, but probably not right now. I think now we have a heady combination of nervous new hands, and lots of resistance, going into a long weekend with potentially relatively low liquidity on the exchanges.

I think Mt Gox USD/BTC will try to drop today, but can't go too low as it will be held up by buying pressure for EUR/BTC and from other exchanges (they've been stronger all week). We could see a fairly significant dip down to high 70's over the next 3 days though. I imagine this will cause a little bit of panic-sell.

All will be well on Easter Monday though -- on the third day, BTC will rise again, and we'll be gunning for the $100s.

That's where my money's at anyway. I think BTC will emerge much stronger for it.

Looks like it's starting already...

I'm not at all predicting future performance. You may want to re-read. I was providing a case for Bitcoin's value not being overblown. Actually you didn't ask me to predict future performance. Which is good, because I can't.

What I can tell you is that the risk of failure is fairly constant over time. I also _consider_ that the risk of a steep decline is offset by buying pressure at lower prices. There was strong evidence for this during the block chain fork.

Hope this helps.

BTW, I should also add -- I wouldn't deride WordPress, Reddit or Namecheap. The first is an Internet phenomenon with a massive network effect. The latter I would consider the #2 registrar after Godaddy. WordPress is beyond huge.

Yes, they are just Internet names, but we have to start somewhere and the network effects from these big names in the industry will be very positive. If adoption continues in this vein, BTC will have a very high future utilisation.

Furthermore, it is entirely reasonable to speculate on the future trade value of BTC now, not after the fact. Bitcoin market cap is still far below that of PayPal and will be for a long time.

I actually posted this twice in this forum already -- there's a search function you can use. It's not like "is BTC overvalued?" is a rare topic on this subforum, after all :-)

Anyway; I'll bite. Here you go:



You can see that the overall level of speculation is high, but as a ratio to overall transactions, it has actually been decreasing since late last year.

The previous bubbles are very pronounced if you zoom out, but -- I'll be honest -- it's impossible to establish cause/effect for these ones. Jury's still out IMO:



You can also check blockchain.info "my wallet" adoption as a surrogate measure of overall usage. Find that yourself.

As far as I can see, the user base is expanding and accelerating -- not linearly but not quite exponentially either, with a significant increase in gradient this year. This should be having an exponential impact on the price. That's what I'm seeing.

Here's CNY:BTC over the past year on a log chart. Doesn't look unexpected to me.



I'm interested in discussing both points of view sensibly, but may I ask you to tone down your attitude a bit please? "What the hell" indeed -- and quite why you "expect" anything from the rest of us is beyond me.

Furthermore, any chart zoomed out to years-long timescale of nascent market, will look absolutely like that -- exponential or above growth as new users flood in. The previous crash happened at a totally different point of development of Bitcoin.

BTC is not immune to crashes -- but posting a zoomed out chart does nothing to show it will crash now.

Here is a more sensible chart. It's not even log scale!



Hell, over 60 days it doesn't even look that bad!

Exactly!

There are markets all over the world where BTC is selling right now for ~$90.

If you don't think it's worth it, the burden of proof is on YOU.

As far as I can see, the user base is expanding, and speculation:usage ratio is stable or decreasing.

I don't understand this.

A trade takes two -- a buyer and a seller. The govt can't forcibly buy my bitcoins, and I'm not ready to sell all of them.

If they just come in and buy most or all of what people are willing to sell, that would be great -- the price would just be driven up.

Europe, I think. In China we tend to just track Gox -- albeit about half a $ higher when settled. Volume is still very thin.

My mind boggles at the thought of my colleagues in the finance sector here all catching on to Bitcoin... hence https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=158226.msg1686229#msg1686229

Agree, but I think this crosses the line from "skeptical" to "nefarious". If BTC were stocks (and fortunately it is not, but still...), this kind of posting would be illegal.

I would use it to design and print 1,000 mini flyers in Chinese explaining what bitcoins are and how to buy them, and arrange to have them distributed in the white collar business districts in Shanghai.

All the action seems to have come from the Eurozone today -- all movement was during morning hours in Europe and afternoon in Asia.

During US daylight hours, things seem to have slowed down.

Quite a milestone in China, we breached CNY500. That's quite a chunk of change.

Honestly, do you think $75 - $80 is resistance, or old hands/manipulators creating walls to cool things down? I don't think the market is as free as you like to think.

^My thoughts exactly. It's actually quite slow-going, particularly compared to last week; with no real walls of resistance in the 80's.

Things are looking pretty bullish :-) Thanks, Proudhon!

This is just the same shit we had from 'Zyphus' and his friends last week. The post above with falso rumours should actually be moderated. Differing opinion is good. Purposely false rumours aren't...

We're headed through $100 (and much higher) sooner or later. But don't be too disheartened about this weekend if it doesn't pan out quickly. The banks will be shut for up to 4 days for easter.

If we do, we will (temporarily) fall straight back down again.

I see short spurts of fast price increases, but I don't see any sustained parabolic move. Most of the week it has been fairly linear growth.

It's a possibility, but I think we'll start finding walls in the mid-90s. The 80s never were going to be very memorable.