I sold bitcoins on MtGox in the $20s and high teens.  At the time this was considered 'crazy' by some on this forum as bitcoins were only going to go up due to increasing difficulty. 

If you need to sell it's worth averaging your sales out over a long period of time by periodical sales.  Not doing so is by default betting that you can beat the market and sell at a higher price in the future.  Maybe so, maybe not.  Most people fail at this.  The few who succeed post on these forums about their investment achievements, the rest remain silent.

One thing I do agree with most forum posters about is that bitcoins have found a true resistance level around $8 to $11.  It's unlikely they will fall much lower as many miners' costs would be higher than the bitcoins they produce.  I know I'll get a deluge of responses from people paying 8c/kWh, but those people need to look beyond the shores of North America.  Not everyone pays such low prices.  If mining were profitable at $5 or lower with current difficulty (as some claim) then we'd still be seeing a large increase in hash rate every week as it's a no brainer to add as much mining capacity as possible with BTCs at $11.

A local bank getting robbed doesn't affect the price of the dollar.  Why would it?  Someone stealing maybe 0.00001% of all outstanding US currency is hardly going to shake the extremely deep and liquid market.  Customers don't lose any money as the bank is insured, and it's always possible for the government to step and replace the money.

Compare that with bitcoins, where the market is very thin and can be moved down a long way with just a few thousand bitcoins.  There is no recourse for those that lose their wallet.  No compensation and no possible way to retrieve the lost bitcoins.  Where before have users had the ability to store several hundred thousand dollars in a file?  Pwning someone's credit card or bank account number doesn't count, as it's just access to the account and not the actual account itself.  The customer is ultimately protected.  Bitcoins are a little like stuffing cash in the mattress, except that someone can raid your mattress from the other side of the world while you're sleeping.

Why not?  The reward for getting read access to one file on one individual's internet connected computer has rarely been so large.  How many John Citizens store several hundred thousand dollars on their computers that can be moved instantly?  The only sure way to protect a wallet is to disconnect it physically from the internet.  Some people may do that, but I bet most don't.

My ~$7.50 orders are still in place.  I expect them to be filled sometime in the next few months when the next exchange is hacked or someone gets access to a fat wallet.dat.  It's only a matter of time as the potential rewards for pwning one file are so large. 

I use my bitcoins for purchasing US dollars and then converting them to AUD$.  I haven't found anything yet for sale in bitcoins that I could or would buy.  None of the Amazon or eBay purchases I make could be made in bitcoins.

In terms of investing and speculating, the current market is terrible.  It's not going anywhere.  However, in terms of getting bitcoin to be taken seriously as a viable online currency, I agree that this is the best possible thing to happen.  Viva la bitcoin price indifference!

Run power, a PC and an Internet connection to a rural stall, wait up to a hour for transactions to be confirmed... or just use cash.  I know which one is much cheaper and easier.

The other great source of 'free' electricity is that of the employer's.  It works great... until someone discovers who is eating all the power and that person gets fired.  So worth it for a few dozen bitcoins.

There is also the third minor category of using the parents' electricity.  That works great... until dad rips junior a new one over the sudden escalation in power usage.  The added bonus is that many people are on scaled power charges.  The more you use the more all electricity in the household costs.  It's a great profit driver and efficiency measure in one.

Best thing to do?  Buy more, I say.  Whatever happens everyone else benefits.

Bullish trend due to Head & Shoulders?  I've seen plenty of stocks plummet after that happens and never recover.  First spike is euphoria from the initial investors, second spike is suckers coming in to push up the market, third spike comes from wishful thinking that maybe the price will recover.... before it plummets and becomes a permanent penny stock.

Hey, from January to April when bitcoins increased from $1 to $30 some people were living that dream.  Exponential difficulty, exponential price.  Seemed so easy.

Have you ever become sick from food you ate during your travels?  I have, in Thailand.  It wasn't pretty.  No, I didn't die but at the time it felt almost as bad (for 7 days...).  What recourse do I have to the Thai vendor that sold me the food?  I was flying out to Singapore by the time the bug hit.  But I guess regulations (otherwise known as standards) are bad.  Anything should be allowed.  Let the free market decide.

Before anyone starts about only foreigners getting sick because the local population is 'used to it', the Thai tour guide was the first person to get ill from street food during the trip.  He asked me for anti diarrhea tablets!  Food borne diseases are a major cause of death in some Asian countries.  Also through pesky government intervention Singapore managed to get rid of Dengue Fever by making it illegal to keep standing water outside.  Yes, it's a criminal offense.  Harsh?  Yes.  Effective?  Just ask Malaysia.


I realise the system I described above is akin to what happens in the USA.  Some other countries have subsidised medicines and bulk negotiated contracts for the supply of pharmaceuticals so that desperately sick people can afford them.  There's that nasty government intervention at work again.

When Australia was negotiating the free trade agreement with the USA a decade ago the USA wanted the AU government to scrap bulk discount negotiation for pharmaceuticals.  Who was pushing for that?  The US pharmaceutical industry.  Fortunately the AU government held firm and didn't cave in to free market pressure.  Who is more effective at negotiating a lower price?  The government, on behalf of 20 million potential customers, or the sick individual who needs the medicine and has no choice? 

I'm surprised it took this long for speculators and investors to realise that there was a sell off in bitcoins almost every weekend, so why not wait until Monday or later to sell?

Price manipulation is what makes this bitcoin market so much fun to watch.  Action like last night's sudden buying binge from $10 to $12, and the rapid drop back again are popcorn moments.  If one person wants to pump and dump the market then so be it.  It's a good test of a free market completely free of pesky government intervention and regulation that only serves to stifle innovation.  I'm hoping for a good show on the weekend too.

This forum is liberally populated with perma-bulls who only see the upside in bitcoins.  It's refreshing to hear the opinions of someone who wasn't successful.  The value of bitcoins is still ~66% off its highs.

One thing is assured with bitcoin investments: we will never hear today from those people who purchased bitcoins at $20, $25, and even $30.

That business wouldn't survive... unless it serves tourists who transit the area and get sick later on.  The business wouldn't care if they served contaminated food to a tourist who will be gone within hours or even minutes.  The tourist will be in another town or country by the time they get sick.  The bad business would gets to stay and keep serving bad food to the next batch of tourists.


Self regulation would be a handy system for the pharmaceutical industry.  The corporation gets to declare which treatment works and set their own prices for people who can't live without the treatment.  Treatment doesn't work and the patient dies?  The patient doesn't get to complain.  Can't afford it?  They didn't really need it anyway.


If there is one assured thing in life, is that there are no absolutes.

Someone did try something epic yesterday by launching a flurry of trading activity, presumably in an attempt to raise the price.  I would hate to be the sucker who bought at the intra day peak of over $12.  Maybe it was the pumper, maybe it was another trader who was being pumped.  A lot of money went in and raised the average price by over a dollar.  After that feeding frenzy it has remained very stable.  Very interesting.

The main attraction of ASICs is greatly reduced electricity consumption compared to powering a whole PC to run a few inefficient graphics cards.  If GPU mining is quite profitable at today's $10 BTC/USD exchange rate, then someone using ASICs and paying a lot less for power per BTC would be making even more money per bitcoin.  I don't get where the 100% chance of a huge loss comes in when mining would be very profitable right now.

$13M was fed through MtGox in the last 30 days.  Selling a few hundred thousand dollars of extra bitcoins in that period is unlikely to disrupt the market.

Mining heavily now and waiting a year or two to start selling is very risky, as there are a multitude of well established reasons why bitcoin may fail to flourish (published elsewhere, I won't repeat them here).  The choice is to cover your costs now and make a smaller profit later, or risk losing everything for a larger profit later on.  Pretty easy decision for the rational investor.

Would they want to wait and risk bitcoins becoming worthless before recovering the high cost of their investment?  It seems to me the ASIC farm owner would want to sell into the market on a gradual basis to pay for electricity and hardware costs, while keeping some bitcoins for a later date.  That seems to be the lowest risk strategy rather than going for maximum risk.

In the past week we've seen bitcoins gyrate wildly in value.  Up to 30% per day.  Would anyone want to invest several hundred thousand dollars in serious ASIC capability into that?