We have tried it 4 times now:
- During the time Mt.Gox was closed for 12 hours, in Bitstamp and other exchanges
- Immediately after Mt.Gox was opened, in MtGox
- About 12 hours after it was opened, in MtGox
- Yesterday, in MtGox

It is starting to feel strong.. Maybe it will fall next 

- Lead time from hearing to buying. It took more than a year from my first contact with bitcoin, to buy ANY. (Expect a rally in 2014, based on the current events.)

- Difficulty in obtaining them, since most of the platforms are incredibly risky (bitcoin exchange half-life of <12 months).

- Bitcoin price logarithmic trendline is 26% per month. It means a double at exactly every 3 months. We were getting a bit ahead in March.

I would give 12% odds for the following statement:

"Placing a bid order now at $32 in Mt.Gox, it will be fulfilled before end of 2013."

About 22% for the following:

"Placing a bid order now at $49.9 in Mt.Gox, it will be fulfilled before end of 2013."

That's good. I would think it nets you more than it takes.

I would give a 20% chance now, that bitcoin in a major traded exchange would go below $50, 12% for a visit to $32. (Before end of 2013)

Less than 5% that we linger at around 50 next autumn.

I can't bother with automatic trading. It's a matter of position size, coupled with other factors.

Btw. anybody still interested in these floor puts?? Or did the scare go away just because I said it should..

My problem is that my trading emporium makes more every day, and currently bitcoin is the major beneficiary of this new money.

Sell all your coin at $80 now, 60% in 8 hours is unsustainable.

Huh. Nothing has shaken me as much as agreeing with Proudhon.  Perhaps we will revisit $32, I hope.....

What I see many people doing, is that they only now wake up to the fact that bitcoin CAN go to zero (although not because of selling pressure..) and their average entry point is sub-$10. As a consequence, they sell a good percentage of their coins to recoup their investment "as long as they are on the black".

This deepens the crash and causes more panic selling. Many would sleep better by buying these puts to the value of their original investment. They would only need to sell a fraction of the amount that they are selling now, to pay the premium. Thus the selling pressure would abate, making the puts' value go to zero. Everyone is happy, especially the writer of the puts.

How much? 

I put this onto speculation, as the organized offering of such instruments is forbidden for me. I can only privately bet against my friends, and private means "PM".

Anyway, I think the widely traded $50 OTC put would hit the sweet spot for many of the readers:

- With maturity of all of 2013, it essentially hedges the total market failure risk of Bitcoin. Dipping to $50 after staying the whole 2013 above it, is not a likely event in this market climate.
- No differential betting, the exerciser of the option needs to have the bitcoins to sell, if he wants to profit. Free resale of the option OK.
- In the event of a total wipeout of the protocol, it would return the whole $50 to its holder, even if he cannot complete the sale of the bitcoins in the destroyed protocol.

Somebody willing to write or buy and at what price. Just speculate

Public announcement: If everybody has so far been able to get everything that is to them due, from Bitfinex, even last week, I consider it safe enough to extend my trading there also.

So please tell quickly in case there has been any issues with this, so that I can start! 

Ah, there was no argument after all   I am most of the time perfectly wrong, but still seem to do just fine because of my resilience.


There are several approaches, I can't even name them all. I have a sort-of glossary of trading strategies in the making, but I have only formulated the following so far:
1. buy (or dca) and hold
2. buy once, and sell according to predetermined schedule (of time, or exch.rate)
3. trade swings, with rapid buyback
4. only buy upmoves (minimum btc holding risk, catches 25-50% of the gains)
5. arbitrage

People who are near and dear to me, have suggested that I should "take profits and let the freebies run". This is a valid strategy for non-professionals. We professionals do not subscribe to sunk cost fallacy. For me the exchange rate loss of a $million is as real, regardless whether I had bought the coins for $1 or $100. If I would employ the strategies #3-#4 above, this would be seppuku time. But I don't. My strategy is #1 & #5, with a small dip into #3, and I am doing fine with very little risk, measured in BTC. Nothing, save the abject and total failure of the protocol, can take away a significant percentage of my bitcoins. If Bitcoin is not destroyed, I will be a force to be reckoned with. Even destroying me does not change this fact, according to my understanding of how Bitcoin works.

If Bitcoin fails, I will still be able to buy my weekly bottle of Riesling. Stick to your own trading strategy, and if ever you make it big, you will lean towards my thinking, perhaps even without knowing it.

So far, an "ouch" 


Silvervault hit 17.38 (up) today in the face of paper crashing, because the physical premium in the U.S. (Apmex) is already $6 per ounce(!!), which is incorporated into the formula. So far no cashing out of Bitcoin millionaires though, that would be interesting.

You think a silver investor in 2008 can be humbled by anything? Oh well, perhaps, but in that case he would have ceased to be a silver investor back then.

I think what gives me the confidence is above all the following facts:
- I only invest what I can lose, I mean, lose, meaning ZERO.
- Since I own gold, silver and bitcoins, the probability of all crashing at the same time, is ... umm. .. not so big        
- I don't leverage or short = peace of mind (except with peanuts)
- I can earn more than I spend.

You can do what is good for you, but don't label people cocky just for the reason that they want to buy more bitcoins even though they already have some. I don't have the position of another poster, who could make BTC200 become BTC600 during the crash. You seem to have no idea how conservative rich people are. Losing 100% if an exchange goes down, is bad. "Losing" 80% of the "value" on top of +2000% gains is an inevitability.

The problem with me, is that I don't think in terms of fiat. I switched to silver in 1/2006 and bitcoin in 3/2013. I haven't made a loss in my currency. OK, I admit that if bitcoin "goes up", I still feel richer, so perhaps my problem is beyond curable.

Also, I don't use Mt.Gox for coin acquisition. It is way too risky for an old school guy like me. The greatest I bought in Bitstamp in March was about BTC1,500 per day, and that was 37% of the exchange's volume during the period. I repeat, in my experience, getting coin was difficult during the runup from $50 on. Glad to be back here!

Anyone with more than a truckload of money, would be better off just buying at sub-$100 levels, as otherwise he would probably end up with less bitcoins. I don't know, whether I am referring to you. Am I?  

What exactly are you going to do when you get worried? Sell all your coins at the bottom?

I think the only sane choice with a long term position is to buy until one of the following happens:
- The network breaks down beyond repair
- Bitcoin hits mainstream.

Everything else is a zero-sum game. Ah well, denominated in fiat even speculators can get return

If you think the probability of bitcoin going to $300k is less than 1/6000 of it going to $0, yes, you should not buy at these levels.

I think it is well over .1%, which makes it an incredible buy, but to each his own.

These bulls are tame oxen, moo moo.. I am proud to have bought BTC500 last night (UTC) at $80-$90 range. Do you actually think you will get to buy these coins easily when it starts to run? If you are gone for good, au revoir. Just please don't flock the entrances the way you flock the exits. I start to wonder if everyone here is trading a <BTC1,000 position as they seem to be able to go in and out several times a day...

I think it better represents the actual position of the basic unit in the universe of values and speculation.

Bitcoin is currently traded like a stock. The market cap of listed companies divided by their share count, gives the share price. The companies cannot easily influence their market cap (increasing this is generally their aim, though). What they can do with ease in most jurisdictions, however, is to adjust the number of shares by splitting and (less commonly) reverse-splitting them.

I followed the development of Nokia Corporation in 1993-2000 from a diversified unprofitable midsize Finnish company, to the unrivalled global mobile phone giant. The market cap rose more than 100x from the bottom in 1993. Nokia did not want their share to look expensive, bubblish, or "too rich and lazy" at 266 euros, though. They kept on splitting it to keep the price in their sweet spot range.

Small companies that are risky, often want their share price to be in the sub-$1 range to attract the kind of people looking for quick profits, and also to mask illiquidity. Just consider, if bitcoin "ask" is $140 and "bid" is $120, it looks very wrong. Otoh, if a millibitcoin trades in between 0.12-0.14, everybody is OK with it, since you cannot expect anything more from a penny stock.

In my opinion, it is much more fitting for the current state of Bitcoin, to have a stock of 21 billion basic units, trading at 0.06 at present, than to have 21 million units trading at $60.

The change is voluntary, except in this thread, where you risk your post to be moderated if you don't abide the rules  Oh well, I have deleted most of your posts anyway in order to keep it readable. After all, I am developing a story, which you can read starting from the OP all the way to the last page, without dying of boredom. Please tell me how I am doing!

The downside of pulling bids is, you end up chasing the price once it takes off. Bitstamp is one of the second largest exchanges, and I remember one time not too long ago that it was completely cleared of all asks in excess of BTC100. I went to sleep, not being able to buy my daily quota.

The big fish swim slowly. Besides they often think in terms of coins, not fiat. It is no wonder the Winklewii bought 108,000 coins. It is a percent of the supply outstanding.

For anyone with $30M of more (HNWI), it is more a question, what number of coins they want to buy, than at what price. Many are content to buy them significantly higher if ever there is supply at those prices. Too bad there wasn't, so they needed to bring the price down to acquire the number of coins they want. It is collateral damage that they also got them cheaper