What? A seasoned old timer, early adopter, pioneer miner like you?

NO WAY!

Try to do that, and we will ask Bob to show you how wrong you were. I hear he's got lots of time on his hands right now...

Great of you to out bunk predictions!
To use the words of our resident gay star,


which may well be the case. Predicting the future is an art for artists, visionaries, madmen. Over half of which are proved wrong anyway.

However, this doesn't detract from that specific observation: P/ T/ V/. I think it really makes a lot of sense, and it's a valuable tool to analyze any situation - not just the current one - and not necessarily to obtain accurate long term predictions. A few weeks would be more than enough in most crypto circumstances.

Aha! Great insight! In other words, what counts is mainly the sum of volume * price... right?
I'd never seen it from this angle, but it makes a lot of sense.

One thing I like about this place is that there's always something to take away. At least for me.

Awww Torque thanks! I was feeling lonely 


Earlier, someone said something to the effect "The dump to 2k could be avoided if more dumb weak hands sell at 5k" - but I couldn't find the post and quote/credit the author.

However, those words resonated with me - and it also fits your movie nicely.

Who thinks that the situation can be summarized with a message like "Papas & mamas, dumb newcomers, please sell everything off before 5k! Doom! Doom! "?

Because they are smashing the price down. I see some purpose to this action. However, if even Torque won't support me, I might be badly off.

Yes, the usual FUD. Normally, it's moderately successful, but with the smell of bears on the horizon, it can become extremely effective.

I share this view with you. They're probably drooling already, as you said. So why the protracted dump? This doesn't feel like mamas&papas selling off or old schoolers giving up. There must be something more to it.

That's why I was asking for discussion: to help myself build a mental movie of what's cooking - and of the possible future developments.  Not looking for numbers (maybe just ballpark times). A qualitative discussion would be ok at this point.

I checked that page, but I don't get the point. It seems to have been written in 2017 and updated.


The statements and predictions are generic, and there are whole orders of magnitude between alternatives. Are you being serious or sarcastic?

I closed off my short on the last terrific shake down to 7.3k. Too much profit to ignore.

Then I thought - before starting to nurse it again, why not go long?

So I have a long position now, from the past low. It's in profit right now, but I would like to wait a bit more before closing and reversing it.

So, I think this is the problem with margin trading. You begin cautiously - it's a hedge, you know - and before you know it, you turn into a gambler. A winning gambler for the time being, but that's the point: the change in attitude. Using margin trading properly and sticking to the plan - ot at least to the mindset - requires lots of discipline.

My hunch about quick-reversing and longing is still paying out, but if I manage to close this in profit, I'm going back to my safety short. Then let it go down to 2k. I won't care.

I'm disappointed that you, of all the distinguished gentlemen in this fine room, didn't come up with some fascinating, food-for-thought explanation.

What do you think is going on? 

A little, you say??  

For several reasons, I like this solution less. There's much more friction involved in selling/buying real btc. Furthermore, I don't like holding more fiat than I need for ordinary expenses. But above all, this would create a series of taxable events that I want to avoid.

As you suspect, it's necessary to prop it up as bitcoin rises, otherwise what you gain on a dip, you lose on a climb. That's what I call babysitting or nursing. One good way to go about it is the 2J-ladder, which in a nutshell means to sell on the way up (make your short larger) and buy on the way down (make it smaller, profiting a bit).

The alternative is to just set up a largish insurance as a one-off expense and forget about it until it's worth redeeming. This is much easier on the nerves and doesn't require that much labor. However, there are issues with this brutal approach: you need to close it (on a loss) as soon as bitcoin rises too much, and reopen it higher (so a bit of monitoring and labor is required after all); it doesn't pay off with small profits when decreasing the size; and finally, it should be done near a maximum to start with. If we were that good at spotting maxima, life would be easier, wouldn't it? But then, the very point of such a hedge would be moot.

I am using this small margin short as a hedge against an ugly crash.
I'm already long with all my stash. No leveraged margin. Actual btc. Long to the moon.

She keeps going down. Hard dump this weekend. Wish my short was bigger.

This could get ugly for sure. It's already not too pretty as it is right now.

However, the trustee is subject to Japanese - not USA - regulations. I know absolutely nothing about these legal intricacies, but as we've seen in the Gox case, Gox's (I mean the ripped off customers') holdings were accounted in fiat value. If there's any coherence in Japanese bankruptcy laws, giving the corn away too cheap might get the trustee into a hornet's nest of legal retaliation/prosecution.

EDIT - more substance to my thesis from bitserve (nice detective job)

Hm, it's on a Tuesday. Maybe we'll see a pump on the weekend, April 20-22? I'm counting the Friday in the weekend, as it's apparently been for a long time, bitcoin-wise.

EDIT - Jojo69 also answered my question. Thanks.

We may be solving the tx fee issue soonish. Signs are promising. However, one problem I see with bitcoin as a currency is price volatility. It's unbearable. I think that's what Anon136 meant when mentioning gold.

OK, 1 btc = 1 btc - so the price in echo-chamber terms is stable, but

How many apples for 1 btc?
How much bread, gasoline?
How many lambos?

Until these questions get an answer that drifts as slowly as gold (or better yet, slower), general adoption as a currency isn't reasonable to expect.

Which is... when's the last deadline?

This can't be the trustee selling. On Saturday? Puh-leeze!

This is manipulation, plain and simple. Somebody wants to have our coins for cheap.

Don't let them.

Hodl.

Margin trading and derivatives are double-edged swords. They can be used to get rekt, much too easily.

However, the original function of futures was that of guaranteeing certainty of price to sellers or buyers of the underlying commodity (e.g., wheat).

When used in moderation, with ample safety bands on either side, these instruments can be useful to hedge against unfavorable conditions - that's what I'm trying to do here. Nothing new under the sun, I guess.

By having my safety short on leveraged margin, I am risking just a small fraction of my stash (that is, part of my play money) to get insurance against a price drop. E.g., to short 1 btc, you can spend as little as 0.1 btc (on 10x leverage). Of course, any price movement gets amplified 10x, so careful! Safety bands around your position!

Now the technical question is: how do I decide where, how much to short? The answer comes in the form of a working method: use the 2J-ladder to build the position starting small, small, small, and try to bring it higher and smaller.

Well, smaller - within reason. If the position (and the underlying "wheat", which is actually corn in our case) goes UP, it can and should grow little by little, as long as it doesn't get so large that a sudden move UP blows you off or becomes too much of a weight on your "insurance costs".