If this poll manages to aggregate a decent guesstimate for the number of hurt individuals we might get an idea about how long it will take to replace all of them with new people. Your question is aiming at an irrelevancy. Is it really irrelevant? I'll have to defend its relevancy somehow as we are currently looking at speculating about the consequences of a burst bubble. Consider the case that there was only one single individual who bought all of the "profitless" bitcoins and then this person failed to sell any of them at a profit. This hypothesis has a single loser and everyone else is a "winner". If this hypothesis was to be true (in our fantasy world) then the emotional consequences of a burst bubble should be close enough to zero to matter at all. In this case the system has in practice been sponsored towards greater success in the future. In the opposit case we have a quite more significant emotional impact. Imagine the case that only one rich person had possession of all bitcoins except for those that were bought at more than 70 usd. Then this rich person is the only individual who manages to sell any coin at a profit during the bubble burst. In this case we have quite a significant emotional impact from the bubble and it will be quite a challenge to recover some semblance of faith in the bitcoin system as a whole. It would be really hard to consider bitcoin a viable technological innovation in the future. Reality will be found somewhere between these extremes. It should however be leaning towards one or the other extremes and the impact should adjust with the position along this imaginary axis. Let me put it this way: I want the negative emotional impact maximized, because I want the idiots who destabilize and damage the bitcoin market to disappear. The destabilizers are those who buy high and sell low, i.e. exactly those who lose their money. |
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If this poll manages to aggregate a decent guesstimate for the number of hurt individuals we might get an idea about how long it will take to replace all of them with new people. Your question is aiming at an irrelevancy. Bitcoin is a success at any price, as long as people use it to pay for goods and services. Bitcoins were not made for speculation. When bitcoin stabilizes, we no longer need many speculators. Speculators are mainly needed as long as there are idiots in the market, because they collect the money from them and put it to better use. Looking only at the number of idiots misses the point. No matter how many, the good speculators, those who buy low and sell high and thereby stabilize the price, always win and stay. Bubbles like the current one are like rainstorms, cleaning the sky. We will have such speculative price bubbles as long as enough idiots come into this market. This is generally not entirely bad for a juvenile, emerging market. It raises the market capitalization, because it brings in fresh money. This enables the efficient speculators to stabilize the market better. |
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It looks as if we are headed for a major bull trap. So buying now may not be such a bad idea. However, buying in a market that is generally headed downward is risky. No risk, no fun.  |
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Short-term: down (up-down-up-down)
Mid-term: up
Long-term: up (up and away)
That's my numberless and amateur prediction.
Your prediction is better than most. You forgot: Very long-term: zero. Nothing lives forever, and bitcoin, unfortunately, can also die a sudden death for various reasons. One of these reasons could be some hypothetical bitcoin 2 that comes along, is better, and steals the show. |
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[…] I believe that Bitcoins will be successful, but I also believe this has nothing to do with its price. They will be successful at $1 and at $1000. I like this statement. I believe this also. Bitcoin is the first independent, international, digital currency. This grand idea will not go away again. Even if bitcoins outlive themselves, something similar, better will take their place. That said, I still think we need some good speculators to dampen the price movements, in other words, buy low and sell high. We need them to throw out the many idiots who are damaging bitcoin's reputation. The money simply flows from the pockets of the destabilizers into the pockets of the stabilizers. It always does that. |
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To really answer the question, yes, some do know.
Those who don't give those who do their money.
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Most likely, there will be more volatility and then it will settle and start to trend downwards just like the last bubble in 2011. But it probably won't go back down to $10...probably more like $25 to $40. Then the wait until the next bubble.
I think your estimate is pretty much correct, except that I would say it is still a little bit on the high side. My estimate for the low point is $20, but I would not be surprised at all to see single digits later this year or next. After the 2011 bubble I get this feeling that, unlike more mature markets, bitcoin is attracting newbies so fast that the decline after a price bubble turns into the run-up to the next bubble already before its base value is actually reached. People have not learned from the 2011 bubble. Will they learn from the 2013 bubble? On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I tend to think that they never learn, but then I will get rich. |
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We will see double digits again.
Yep And pretty soon too. I had thought the decline would be somewhat slower. The lesson is once again that when the bubble bursts it is difficult to impossible to trade before the price sort of stabilizes at a much lower level. Fortunately we knew this in advance. If I wanted to blame myself, the only fault was that I still underestimated the stupidity of the trend followers. But bubble peaks are notoriously difficult to predict with any precision. |
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These discussion forums are strange. Each discussion consists of 30% sensible and thoughtful postings, interleaved with 70% idiot postings. I am getting used to this, but I still have to waste a few seconds on each idiot posting to recognize and ignore it.
Have the idiots still not lost all their money and disappeared? Many have, but new ones are always streaming in. I would say 40% of it is deceptive, e.g. I'll tell everyone I'm holding BTC so they won't panic sell and I can get a better price for mine Yes, quite possible. It could also be a mixture of stupidity and deception though, so 30% sensible information, 30% pure stupidity, and 40% stupidity mixed with an attempt to make others follow on the flight into the ground. After the first bubble in 2011 many of the obviously stupid posters disappeared for good. Perhaps the same will happen here too. What I never see is that those who posted their weird predictions now come back and say, "OK, I was wrong. Where was my mistake? How come you saw the future correctly, while I didn't?" Apparently these people are not really interested in learning. I guess they lose all their "investment", then they disappear and look for another place where they can do other stupid things. |
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[…] A week from now things are going to look very dismal (if you can't see it already) for prospects of going over $200 for a very, very long time. It would now take over $6m to get back to the all time high, which is about as much as left the bids side over the past 48 hours. Some of that $6m was just cashed out and won't be coming back. Another good chunk of it was already spent in the bouncing around of the past 12 hours. New all time highs are completely out of the question.
I agree. Even the possibility of a brief bull trap spike above the highest value is now unlikely and is becoming even less likely by the minute. What do you think about the volume? When the bubble burst, the total volume that changed hands was roughly half a million bitcoins. I have not checked the volume since then, but the question comes to mind, where are the other bitcoins? I guess that a good fraction of the rest will move when the slighly less dumb newbie speculators recognize that the price keeps going down and sell their stash to the even dumber ones, and perhaps that is already the explanation. But I'd still be interested in your opinion. |
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You people obviously have no idea how asset valuation works. If people believed the price would be 300 in a few days, it would be 300 now. The current price is the best reflection of its future value.
From one angle you are perfectly right. But from another, some people have been able to predict future price movements correctly. A simple example was the bubble. As the price went above $200, some people correctly said, this is a speculative price bubble, which will burst soon, and the price will subsequently sink below $200. In the event it went down almost to $100, followed by a bull trap, and some people predict that more bull traps will follow. This is not only an asset valuation issue. It is also a psychological issue. And it is sometimes possible to foresee other factors influencing the price. To put it in other words, if everybody believed the price should be $300, it would be $300 now, as you say. However, if some people believe it should be $300, while others believe it should be $20, then things are getting more complicated. It may take some time before one group realizes they were wrong and come round to the other valuation. |
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Have the idiots still not lost all their money and disappeared? Many have, but new ones are always streaming in.
Where do you think your profits come in from? Be kind to idiots, they feed you. So true! But it would be nice if they stopped posting. |
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These discussion forums are strange. Each discussion consists of 30% sensible and thoughtful postings, interleaved with 70% idiot postings. I am getting used to this, but I still have to waste a few seconds on each idiot posting to recognize and ignore it.
Have the idiots still not lost all their money and disappeared? Many have, but new ones are always streaming in.
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I think round about 2015-2016, what do you say?  Right on the mark. I estimate the same, with 2015 sounding a tad early. My guess would be 2016, but we basically agree. Edit and remove the smiley. |
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If we actually saw the top yesterday (I think so but in this market nothing is certain) I figure we'll go much lower. Maybe even $20.
I think we did see the top yesterday. Even if the price went higher once more, that would only be a heavy bull trap. And I think you are perfectly on the spot with the $20 prediction. We will have to wait half a year or more for that though. |
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I think it'll eventually stabilize at some value between $100 and $150 and stay there for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another bubble up to $250 or greater. I would be surprised if it went below $100.
I still do not see any basis for such high prices. My estimate is around $20 with single digits not entirely unthinkable. Some people tend to believe that wealth preserving bitcoin owners will keep the price higher, but what would they do if they see that their wealth is not preserved? If they experience a long decline, I think a large fraction of them will sensibly sell, if only to buy back later for a lower price. They will effectively become speculators. The base line for the bitcoin price is established by those bitcoin users who actually pay for goods and services, but that is mostly Silk Road, Satoshi Dice, and a few other businesses where bitcoin payments do not actually have much advantage. My prediction is that we will have a decline that lasts 6 months, a year, or longer, with interspersed bull traps like the first one yesterday. My estimate for the low point is $20. $30, while conceivable, would actually surprise me a bit, $10 would not. Of course, unpredictable things may happen in the future that throw these estimates off, but then we would all see them and adjust accordingly. |
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We are in a picture-book bull trap right now.
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OK, my first question is already being answered, the one about the first major bull trap. We are in it right now. The price went a bit lower than donut's prediction: I call the bottom at no lower than $115, and a rebound to $220 by tomorrow morning.
Ultimately he was wrong, because he predicted a bottom above $115, but the price went somewhat lower. Still his prediction was pretty close to the truth so far. Let's see whether he will be right with the $220 peak. That is not easy to predict. I tend to think that $220 is a bit on the high side as well, but we have seen bull traps that even slightly exceeded the preceding peak. We will know soon. It is easy to predict that the price will generally decline for a long time now, i.e. months or even years. What we don't know is how low it will go. I foresee lowest prices around $20, but this depends on future circumstances and therefore evades any precise prediction. The lowest point could still be somewhat above $20, but it could also be a single-digit figure. |
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I agree. Correction is just a correction. It doesn't mean a crash caused by a fatal flaw in the protocol. It will be short lived because Bitcoin is extremely necessary for wealth preservation. The fundamentals for using Bitcoin have not changed. Just like the fundamentals for Gold have not changed. Truly smart money will be waiting to pile in if we see a massive correction.
The trouble with wealth preservation is that bitcoin is based on nothing, except some people on Silk Road, SatoshiDice, etc., who actually need bitcoins to pay for something real. This means that, if the price sinks, like it does now and will keep doing for a while, save the occasional bull trap, the wealth preservers will observe that their wealth is not preserved. Then they have to sell too, after the speculators have shed their bitcoins. Bitcoin does not yet have the reputation of gold, unfortunately. That would take many more years. That said, we cannot be quite certain what the price will do over the next days. Currently we still have a low volume movement. If somebody sold 100,000 bitcoins right now, the price would be at $20. Conversely, a large buy order could catapult the price to $300. I tend to believe that the bubble has burst today, and we will not see $200+ prices for another year. But, of course, I cannot predict the future with certainty in such a small market that could all too easily be moved by a single order. |
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The sell-off mechanics are interesting to watch. As expected, Mt. Gox cannot cope and now has half an hour lag.
This means that people cannot risk limited sell orders, they have to try to enter unlimited orders to have any chance of selling their rapidly shrinking bitcoins.
This accelerates the slide and makes it even more unpredictable than it already is. I guess it will take quite a while until Mt. Gox can process all pending orders, those pending inside their system and those could not even be entered yet.
The price is going below $200 already, which is an extremely rapid decline.
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