Until crypto becomes mainstream, for now my debts are in fiat currency.  So yes, until that day, price matters.  If I were not in a loss position, I would be comfortable with the wild price swings, because I know that worse comes to worse I can sell everything and not be in a worse position than what I started.  But that is not the case.  In a loss position, it is very stressful to see btc drop $2000 from where it was a few days ago, and TAs predict it may go down to $8200 or lower.  It's stressful when I thought we had exited the descending  channel that we were in for 2.5 months.  Now we've re-entered the descending channel and so those dire predictions of $5200, $4900 and $3500 are now back in play.

Yes, I feel the way you think.

I've been following Technical Analysts just to get a handle and understanding of why the price goes up and down and to understand how the market thinks.  The market is clearly manipulated, which disheartens me.  It means the value isn't determined by the network and what we believe about it, but by all these speculators.

It's not about supply and demand any more.  If it were, the price of BTC would be steadily increasing all the time.  It's about charting a predicted path and buying at the low point of the channel or path and selling at the high point.  And when the price of btc follows the analyst's prediction, then it cements the belief that there are a whole bunch of people shorting bitcoin.

People buy gold jewelry because of the perceived value of gold.  But if the price of that jewelry were to go down by 20% in a day and then up 10% the next - it will make people question the value of gold.  The trustworthiness of the value becomes in question.  That is what is causing a lot of people to fear buying bitcoin: newbies don't buy bitcoin when the price is going down - they only buy bitcoin when they feel that btc is on a bull run.  That's just how newbies think.

bump.  Anyone?

Among my peers, I have been the most optimistic about blockchain and its future, but lately this bear market is taking its toll on me.  I am beginning to be filled with a constant pall of FUD.

Here are my reasons:

1. What if I'm wrong?  Nobody invests in something they don't believe in, but we have all had bad investments - therefore not everything we believed in was good.  What if I'm wrong about public blockchains?  Blockchain has a future, but maybe it's in private blockchain like HyperLedger?

2. What decentralization?  Part of what is feeding this FUD I have is that I have an extremely diversified crypto portfolio, and yet despite this everything is down right now, and it pisses me off.  The entire crypto market value is centralized around bitcoin.  I really like bitcoin, but I don't want everything to revolve around it.  That doesn't make sense in an ideal decentralized world.

3. Value proposition?.  I once had a heated argument with someone who insisted the value of crypto was purely speculative.  I argued that it was high value because it's following the S-curve of adoption, and therefore we expect it to be hyperbolic and absorb everything.  That was back in Dec.  Now in March I see that he was right.  S-curve of adoption doesn't look like this.  The market looks exactly like the early and speculative days of an emerging asset class.

4. If we build it, will they come? A lot of critics of blockchain say that blockchain has no use, even after 10 years.  My counter-argument would be that after 10 years, we're still developing infrastructure.  It would be like the Internet in the 80s - we didn't really see e-commerce appear until the late 90s.

Ethereum is an example of infrastuture building that's still in a beta phase.  It's not scalable yet.  Buterin said that Ethereum's scaling plan will roll out over the next 5 years (!).

But what if we build all this infrastructure and the world doesn't care?  I told my friends that what blockchain gives us is not necessarily BETTER services, but decentralized services.  We can all become our own "mini-Google" or "mini-youtube" - not just users of Google or youtube but actually create our own Google or Youtube without spending hundreds of millions of dollars.  Blockchain allows us the promise of decentralizing everything - from banks to services that would normally require giant corporations.  But what if this is just a pipe dream?

Power Ledger is a good example of this.  Rather than depending on the services of a centralized power generating corporation, we can all be our own mini-power-generator, serviced using the Power Ledger network.  Power Ledger is a really good example of a real-life decentralized service that is attractive, relatable and sensible.  I think people WILL use it.  People are interested in buying the hardware required to generate their own clean energy, so connecting to a micro-grid and Power Ledger's service makes sense.  But does a decentralized ebay make sense?  Or a decentralized youtube?  Many services are served better when they are centralized, because people come to expect a consistency in experience and service.

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Can anyone counter-argue these?  I'm starting to lose faith.  I was up over 200% in January, now today I have just dropped below break-even.  I HODLed, and I feel like an irresponsible fool.  It's hard to be optimistic when an entire diversified crypto portfolio is in the red.

I appreciate your comfort right now.

.. so I've been watching and reading about btc technical analysis almost daily now, and I'm kind of sick of being in this current triangle.  I've only been in btc since September so I really don't have that much history, but for those who have been in btc much longer - how much longer do you think it will take before btc goes back on the upward trend again?  It just seems like a really long sideways movement.

On Dec 17th, it reached its high of $20k, and it has taken almost a month and we're still below those numbers.  What is your estimate for when we can be above $20k again and onward to what people predict for this year ($50k-$100k)?  Another month?  March?

I know nobody knows for sure, but just looking to hear about what people's gut feel is (and only from those who have btc experience over a year please).

Thanks.

F $US.  Shame on anyone who sells out bitcoin for something worthless.

Hi guys - please participate in this poll.  Just want to get an idea of whether people are going to side with the central banks, or side with the common folk on this.

I think that you could make a lot of money siding with the banks by trading futures, but you are already making a lot of money buying bitcoin.  Hopefully people don't sell their soul for the US$.  The dream is to be free from central banks, not to go in bed with them, IMO.  You might disagree and are doing this just to get more US$.

Thanks for your participation and honesty.

How does this affect the price of bitcoin?  What you're saying seems to imply that the US$ will be affected not bitcoin.  I suppose if you own a lot of bitcoin and you flooded the market just to buy the futures contract, that would tank the price?

thank-you for correcting me.  If that's the case, then some people are going to make and lose US$.  How does that affect the bitcoin price?  I don't get it.  To me they are two different universes.  It's like if we had a telescope to see the activities of people in another planet, we could bet on futures on their activities and make/lose money - but that doesn't affect their ecosystem.

How would US$ based futures affect bitcoin?   I don't get it.

This is how I think futures affects the price.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Say in November bitcoin is $8k, and Bob bets that in 1 month time that the price will be $10k.  John agrees to the futures and to sell bitcoin at $10k to Bob in Dec.

In December, the bitcoin price is actually $15k.  Now Bob gets a $5k discount, and John loses $5k - plus a whole bunch of bitcoin is sold at $10k when the price is $15k.

Does the whole market react and then tank because a whole amount of bitcoin was sold at $10k??

Today I want to talk about tulips and the dot com bust. A lot of "smart" economists have been claiming that they are the same bubble as bitcoin. I'll tell you why it's not the same.

In order to understand effects, you need to look at root causes. What is the root cause of the dot com rising, and what is the root cause of the dot com bubble bursting? The root cause of the dot com boom is euphoria over the implications of internet businesses. It reached the mania stage where everybody wanted to get in on the action. The root cause of the dot com bust are Venture Capitalists who ran out of funding money and went to the dot coms and demanded results. Most of the dot coms could not produce results or profits and so went bust, pretty much all at the same time because it was the same group of VCs that were coming to claim debts. The root cause of the boom and the root cause of the bust are not related at all.

Regarding cryptocurrencies, the root cause of the meteoric rise of bitcoin is that it everybody wants it. But there is a distinction here. There are the faithful, who believe in the dream of a decentralized world free from the control of evil central banks. This is the majority of bitcoin owners: at least 80%. Then there are the "tourists" still stuck in the centralized banking world, who are in the "mania" stage - they want in on the action; they only care about bitcoin because it gets them more US$. That's why when you see corrections, you see wild price swings but there is a hard wall - because the 80% faithful NEVER WANT TO EVER SELL BITCOIN for US$. The 80% have learned their lesson - never sell out of bitcoin (for US$) because you will regret it. Selling an appreciating asset for a depreciating asset (US$) is the worst decision EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS 80% HAS MADE - I'm in these forums, and that's what they believe.

To understand the 80%, you have to understand this: there are over 1000 different cryptos, but people don't buy those cryptos because they like them more than bitcoin - they buy them because they think it can rise faster than the price of bitcoin SO THEY CAN BUY MORE BITCOIN. In the stock market, nobody sells stocks so they can get more of "the one stock". No - people buy and sell stocks to get more US$ - because the US$ is the reserve currency of the centralized world. In the decentralized world, people buy and sell all those various cryptos to get more bitcoin - the 80% are NOT interested in getting more US$ - we all want bitcoin.

Now let's talk about the 20% - the tourists from the centralized world. The smart-ass investors who think they understand bitcoin because they think it's a "company" or a "commodity". They don't understand that bitcoin is neither of those - it is a paradigm shift - it is an ideal - freedom for the plebs from the evils of central banking. Bitcoin was born out of the horrors of the Great Recession brought on by evil banks who bankrupted the middle class and got bailouts from the government. All thanks to the f'n US$ that is completely out of our control. The middle class was manipulated PERIOD. If you're in the middle class and you're shouting from the roof tops that bitcoin will crash because you believe the old bankers who say this - shame on you. Bitcoin was made for us - the middle class - to free ourselves from central banks, if you side with the central bankers instead of us plebs - shame on you, because they stole your money and recognize the threat of bitcoin to their control, and you agree with them. These tourists will now be entering the market on Dec 10th, Dec 18th and more of them next year as NASDAQ just approved futures too next year. They will come in and try to manipulate the 20% of bitcoin that isn't held by the believers.

The root cause of a collapse of bitcoin are these 20% of tourists getting spooked and exiting all at once. Now does this sound like the dot com bust? No - completely different root causes. Bitcoin would be caused by all the tourists getting spooked all at the same time, dot-com was caused by dot-coms not being able to produce profits for VCs. Totally different. The only similarity is that both had parabolic valuation growth - but correlations are not the same as causations. As for 20% getting spooked - you tell me whether you think that will crash the bitcoin price to zero. The 80% of people that hold bitcoin are rich middle class believers - you think we're not waiting to buy more when the price drops? You think we haven't been round the block before and seen these wild swings? The centralized world isn't used to seeing massive drops of 20% - the decentralized world is used to seeing it, so we're not spooked because bitcoin just recovers again after a few days.

Now, let's talk about tulips. First, the comparison is stupid. Tulips die and can be produced to infinity - just like the US$. Bitcoin can only EVER go to 21M, and in fact people predict that about 4M bitcoin have been lost forever because people lost their private keys and wallets when bitcoin was only worth a few cents and dollars. Currently there are 16.6M in circulation and we will only reach 21M in the year 2140, and if we factor in the 4M coins that have been lost and the 1M held by Satoshi Nakamoto who doesn't plan to ever release them, then the real circulating supply is 11.6M. That's a far cry from the US$ and tulips which have an infinite supply. Price is dictated by the simple economics of supply and demand. If you have more supply than demand - the price goes down. There are 36M millionaires in the world and only 11.6M bitcoin available today. There isn't enough bitcoin to go around - that's why bitcoin WILL go to $1M valuation and beyond. You can't argue against math.

Bitcoin was made for you. Celebrate it and buy it.

Yes.  People have to understand why bitcoin is going up so fast.  It isn't because of speculation.  It isn't because people want to make more US$.

It's because the decentralized economy is replacing the centralized one.  The decentralized economy will keep growing until it completely absorbs the old world centralized economy, which is in the 100s of trillions.  In 10 years time, people will laugh at fiat currency, just like we laugh at newspapers and encyclopedias.

So your $5000 is in the best place for the future, because you got rid of a depreciating asset (US$) which will soon become obsolete, for the thing that will have the most value in the future economy.

Never sell bitcoin.  I thought people would have learned this lesson by now.

When bitcoin was dumping real hard a week ago, I read this post by a smart-ass investor who claimed to have sold $100k in bitcoin and was planning to buy back in $25k lots at $7800, $6000, $5000 and $4000 or something like that.  It never dropped to those levels and so here we are touching $13k about a week later.

Stupid investors are coming to the crypto economy thinking that the crypto economy is some get-rich scheme for getting more US$.  They don't understand.  Bitcoin is pumping not because of speculation.  It's pumping because people are abandoning fiat and recognizing fiat is becoming obsolete and has the same value as sand.  It's the US$ that has no value.  People reluctantly sell some crypto just to pay taxes or bills, but other than that the money stays in the crypto economy.

Don't be a foolish crypto-tourist.

So EMC2, most of us KNOW is a shitcoin, and yet it is pumping to the moon.  Their use case is for financing science projects.  Now in the real-world, and in any world for that matter, financing science projects is a fools errand.  Science projects don't make anybody money: products do.  And for every 100 science projects, maybe 1 lands a patent which might have some value: certainly not the amount of money that warrants the price of EMC2 token.

No, the SENSIBLE thing to do is to invest in crypto projects that have real value and make real money in the real world.  The decentralized crypto world is replacing the centralized world, that's why the price of bitcoin will continue to rise to $1M and beyond.  The total market cap of crypto will eventually equal and then surpass the total market cap of fiat currency.  That's why bitcoin is not a bubble - it is a hostile takeover of the centralized world and will continue to grow until it completely absorbs it.

HOWEVER - that doesn't mean that anything crypto is gold.  Money making projects are still money making projects, and money-losing projects that require donations are still money-losing projects that require donations.  Most science projects are funded by universities - not private money because they are money-losing, therefore Einsteinium has no use case for people to make money - it's use case is to donate money because you ain't gonna get anything back.

Which brings me to my subject heading: Einsteinium pumping makes me feel stupid because I am a crypto investor who is making great investing decisions, but I didn't gain the massive pump of Einsteinium because it is a shit coin, but evidently there are plenty of fellow crypto investors who bought it any way.

What can I learn from this?  Just buy some stupid project because a bunch of people are eventually going to pump it for no reason?  EMC2 got pumped because they lied about having an Apple partnership, but even after they admitted it it was a lie, it still pumped which emphasizes more the "stupid" part.

The reason this bugs me, is because I'd like to think most of us who bought into bitcoin are highly intelligent.  We don't think inside the box - the current centralized world that we live in - we recognize that we are changing to the decentralized world.  We are in the top 1%.  But shitcoins pumping flies in the face of my belief.  That bugs me.

 

Guys - exchanges are not banned in China.  There's Huobi which is still open.  What has stopped is btc-yuan exchangING.  Crypto-crypto trading is still allowed in China.  Also, obviously because China mines most of the bitcoin, they must be able to get it to exchanges somehow.

can someone please help explain this?  Thanks.

anyone can help explain? thanks!

Sorry - still don't understand BIP39 (etc) - how does a static phrase generate dynamic addresses?  I noticed while using my Ledger Nano S, that every time I make a bitcoin deposit into the Ledger, it generates a new deposit address.  The entire Ledger is represented by a 24 word phrase - how does a static phrase generate addresses dynamically?

The only thing that makes sense to me (and I am 20 years in the IT industry) is that the 24 word phrase represents a "pointer" in the distributed network and the distributed network is generating the addresses that it stores against the 24 word phrase key pointer?

For example, when you create some of these alt-coin wallets, you are asked to enter an 80 character seed.  From that seed an address is created.  You deposit your coins, and can create a new wallet from that same 80 character seed.  So a static 80 characters is used to generate a seed that stores dynamic information (your coin deposits), but the management of that dynamic information is by the NETWORK.  Is this how BIP39 (etc.) works?  The 24 word phrase is used by the network as a pointer to a database of wallets?

Thanks!!

you guys are crazy waiting on this.

Your logic is that there will be a pump and dump just like all other ICOs.  But other ICOs pump base on rainbows and unicorn farts.  Power Ledger is the ONLY ICO that launched with a piloted product and massive government backing and regulation.

The best analogy for this is to look at Ripple.  Ripple also had a massive pump and dump shortly after launch, but at launch they didn't have a product - just dreams like all the other ICOs.  If you want to compare with Ripple, compare with Ripple when it hit the 16c range.  That's where Power Ledger is in the development lifecycle.  Did Ripple go to 16c then go back down to $0.006?  Do you expect Ripple to go back down to $0.006 levels?  No, right?

Some of you crypto investors sometimes seem to be huge gamblers - your whole investment analysis is based on looking at graphs, trends and past performances of similar tokens.  You completely ignore the product.  I watch all these youtube videos of crypto-investors touting the next breakout coin for 2018 and I look at the product and the product is shit.  The whole shill is just based on looking at a bloody graph!

Power Ledger is different.  Among the top 10 cryptos, it is way ahead of many that don't even have real-life application yet.  Out of the top 20 coins, only Stellar Lumens and Bitcoin are really being used in real-life applications in production environments.

okay thanks.  So the key is that the bitcoin had to exist in a wallet, not merely exist.  I thought a BCC could be claimed so long as the bitcoin existed (was mined already), so that bitcoins that were in "limbo" in some exchange could theoretically be withdrawn into a wallet to see if the corresponding BCC had been claimed already for that pre-existing bitcoin.  It's too bad, given that BCC is $450 right now. :-(

Thanks!!