There is a legitimate reason for people to mine until the end of the world though and pay a little overhead compared to buying already-existing BTC:

Mining is a way to create completely new, fresh BTC with zero history, at least until the 21 million BTC network hard limit is reached.
Coins that have never moved on the blockchain, have no history and can't be traced to any exchange or other wallet.

No tax authority, third party, investigator can ever know who owns these freshly minted BTC with any amount of effort or pressuring exchanges to give out their wallet addresses.
Because there is no trail to follow at all.

Which kinds of people need these fresh BTC from new mining blocks is up for speculation, but they exist.

North Korea is speculated to be the manufacturing country of these 'superdollars' (dollars that are faked so well, they are probably made with a real stolen intaglio press and watermarks).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

They can even fool cash dispensers, deposit machines and note authenticators.

Well, no such worry with bitcoin. Trying to create a counterfeit bitcoin is a bit of a fools errand.

The Iranian government circumvents US sanctions by mining Bitcoin. Up to 4,5% of all BTC are mined by gigantic mining farms in Iran.
Iran makes up to $1 billion a year from mining BTC.

https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-crypto-mining-sanctions/31267432.html

Very two faced of them to then block mining for ordinary citizens.

Because this forum apparently isn't about bitcoin discussion, it's about people in poor countries panicking when their $20 investment goes down by 15% temporarily.
And they think it's the end of the world, end of Bitcoin or end of something else.

There is no good BTC discussion here, only on the other sub-boards like economics or trading.

I would work a *secondary* job for bitcoin as a way to accumulate more BTC.

As long as electricity companies and supermarkets don't take BTC I can't pay my major bills with it, so a primary job still has to generate fiat currency like euros or US dollars.

Bitcoin can destroy fiat currency if more and more mainstream establishments like electricity companies start accepting BTC.
Then people might seriously consider taking their paycheck in BTC.

The only reason I'm not worried about holding another 5 years (I don't have huge amounts invested, around $10k) is because so many institutional investors have jumped aboard.
Actual hedge funds and funds listed on American stock exchanges.

These whales dumping $500m+ into permanent Bitcoin holdings which they report as assets quarterly is nothing to scoff at.
If the market suffers so will they.

I have followed the same strategy with Berkshire Hathaway A series stocks (Warren Buffett's investment company). Check their price history on Google.
They do the most due diligence out of any investment company in the world. Their analysis is worth pure gold in its weight.

I have a portfolio dedicated to fully emulating Berkshire Hathaway stock ownership and it has paid off very nicely in the last 5 years.

Why do I think emulating big institutional investors is such a good move? Because they have so much to lose.
They have done a stupifying amount of analysis and forecasts to justify dumping hundreds of millions if not billions into these assets.

So am I worried about my bitcoin holdings long term? Not really. We can revisit this thread in 5 years.
At the time of this post on May 2021, the price per BTC was 32k each.

My earliest investments into BTC were at less than $100 each. I have sold off a lot. I haven't been holding until today.

There is nothing wrong with the core concept of bitcoin, even if there is currently a sell-off which naturally depresses prices.

Nothing about the core functionality of bitcoin changes whether the price is $1000 per btc, 5000 or 5 million.

The panic threads are created by gamblers who are enraged when their money doubling scheme didn't work out in the short term.

I would merit you but I ran out of sendable merits.

This is still the perfect way of obtaining fully anonymous bitcoins.

Get the equipment, mine it yourself - fully clean, untraceable. Not linked to any exchange or person.
So instead of buying $100k worth of btc, get $100k worth of mining equipment.

Or if you don't feel it's worth the hassle, buy hashrate on cloud exchanges. Leaves slightly more trails but it will still generate you BTC and you never need to fill a single KYC form.

Panickers sell their little $10-$100 holdings because they've invested what little they have (and can't afford to lose)
fully into BTC and they rather buy food or pay bills with it. They are losing sleep when their $100 investment temporarily turns into $85 and decide to cash out completely.

Whales with hundreds of millions worth of BTC have no better uses for fiat money, they already have enough stocks, bonds, apartments.
They keep buying out more and more small BTC investors.

Soon the BTC space will be no different from the 'real world' where a tiny group of people (possibly less than a hundred people) owns 90% of everything.

I don't mock small investors and I understand their concerns (most of them are impatient people from socioeconomically disadvantaged countries hoping to double or triple their money fast, and it just isn't going to happen).
But at the same time, they are fueling this development where a couple dozen people will soon own most of all bitcoins ever mined.

There are ways for those people to cash out without filling any KYC procedures like passport identification.

For example trading them for cash face to face under spot value to find buyers fast, in a location with no CC cameras.

They could also use btc mixers to obfuscate the coins.
In short, that money is permanently lost unless the thieves are exceptionally stupid and try to cash in at legal traders.

Very shady site. Even the "contact us" page only leads to a template page of their "timeline", no phone number, not even an email or telegram to contact.

Stay away from it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/
It dropped to $31663 to be exact, about a couple hours ago. Had to double check.
Wasn't quick enough to notice that drop. That would have been an appealing purchase.

Anyway, I was just wondering what other people think about buying during this dip as it's exceptionally large (for 2021).
I don't encourage people to buy who feel uncomfortable with it. I do also believe in long term holding.

I agree with you that most holders don't check daily and will be in for quite a shock when they log in.

Good points. China banning BTC and crypto trade platforms today (and any transactions to them) also bleaks the prospects.

Many big miners are from China and they will now have a very hard time converting BTC to fiat to pay electricity bills for example.
They could also be panic selling.

Musk also planted the seed of doubt by pointing out many large miners (especially in China) use coal energy to mine coins rather than hydro, solar or wind.

There are also rumors Tesla did a BTC dump on Monday, but those are only based on a vague single tweet.

I would diversify into ETH or smaller cryptos, but frankly believe I don't understand them enough to justify the purchase.

Bitcoin is somewhat easier to understand, at least for people who have been in the 'scene' since the early 2010's.

Depends on who you ask. I bought more after noticing it had gone below 40k.

Long term holdings took a hit, can't deny that, but those bumps come and go.

I believe 30k was a good point to buy but I missed that as I was not home or monitoring the market. The drop happened very fast.
Personally, I bought more today at 36k. At about $1100 usd worth of fiat or 900 eur.

I have some long time holdings, which are obviously down quite a bit since 2 days ago.

Without the dip I would have bought anyway but gotten less btc. Now I got 0,03 from this trade.

Just wondering if anyone else (normal traders, not whales) is considering buying the dip or if you are waiting for the price to go lower than 30k before considering buying.

What infuriates me the brokers wont allow you to buy anything.

Either the transaction fails or it says I must wait 2-3 days for it to finish.

Making it impossible to buy the dip.

Skrill is not reliable for buying during dips either. They suddenly changed crypto purchases from instant to 3 days processing time.

That borders on fraudulent practice.

This. I can only laugh as the forum fills up with short term gamblers who think the weekly fluctuations of the coin mean anything over the long term like 5, 10, 20 years.

Let them panic. And I say that as someone who is not a blind "bitcoin fanboy" - I do hope certain aspects of it become history, like big Chinese miners largely using coal energy to mine new coins.

Let those fly-by-night gamblers leave. Who cares about their $100 investment except themselves?
The forum has repeatedly shown they are desperate third worlders who want to triple their money as fast as possible to pay their bills.

Maybe they should consider getting a day job.
Once they have a steady income and become mentally mature they can start doing monthly deposits to BTC. Or stocks, or index funds. For the long term, not for next week.

Funny you mentioned HYIP's. I remember those from 2003-2008. These forums are starting to have the same kind of people.
Cryptos didn't exist back then though, it was e-gold.

Plenty of countries have already accepted cryptocurrencies as a taxable property class, though not payment type. Even backwater nations like Russia.
https://news.bitcoin.com/putin-signs-law-cryptocurrency-legal-russia/

There is no secret cabal or illuminati trying to stop bitcoin as some tinfoils on the forum think.


Many countries in Europe are becoming carbon neutral by 2040 and already generate a big portion of their energy by green production.
Nobody is encouraging the use of coal energy or dirty energy in Europe.

In the UK alone, the proportion of solar, wind and hydropower has risen to 33%. The government has set a target of 75% by 2030.

Bitcoin miners can set an example and become fully solar, wind/hydro earlier than that, and gain political favor by doing so.
Currently a lot of big miners, a lot of whose hashrate orginate from China are using coal-generated electricity to mine bitcoins.

Exactly. Not to mention, Musk being concerned with fossil fuels being used by gigantic mining corporations in China is not "FUD". It's a fact.

For crypto to become fully politically acceptable, as many huge miners as possible need to switch to hydro, solar or wind power.
Instead of using cheap coal-generated electricity as is the case for many big Chinese miners.