All fine and true, but I don't think I'll buy back in (to Bitcoin + alt this time) until Gox unloads their 200,000 coins. I know, off topic for this thread, but damn. I'll just wait. If I shouldn't, then fuck it. Waiting anyway.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, all who gave them. I clearly made a bad market call and have paid heavy consequences. I don't actually have a lot of faith in Bitcoin's price falling to my sell point again, though I do think there is a fair chance with everything going on. But I never expected these prices in these conditions, and I let go of my bitcoins. Bad call!

But it's been a helluva nearly four years.

Bitcoin is definitely not what I thought it was four years ago. Ethereum growing to half Bitcoin's market cap in three years? Hell no, didn't see that coming. Forked coin going to .15 on Bitcoin's own hash algo? Did not see that coming. All the other alt coins and their total market cap? Did NOT see any of it coming.

I have my USD (minus whatever IRS takes). It will surely go back into crypto at some point. I'll choose carefully and invest long term. Maybe never get back my lost bitcoin value. But, lessons learned and (small) money gained is great.

Consensus everywhere I've asked appears to be: BCH isn't going to hurt Bitcoin. That's good news, and I suspect that's going to be true.

Out.

You sound like just another troll to me. Attacking other people's motives... check. Attacking my motives... check. Price prediction with near certainty... check.

Move on.

Yours seems to be the prevailing point of view. I guess I'm just out of cryptos until this starts to make sense to me.

Bitcoin is already in more trouble than people for some reason are admitting. Bitcoin Cash is the most damaging attack on Bitcoin to date, and people simply are not acknowledging that fact (most Bitcoiners anyway). Adam Back says on Twitter, Segwit2x "may" subject the 5k Bitcoin price to "cancellation" if enacted. What makes no sense to some of us is why BCH does not do this already. In fact I think it will unless it is completely and permanently defeated. Right now Bitcoin's mining power is split and chasing 42 million bitcoins! This is a complete violation of Bitcoin's core value proposition, that the hash power will protect strict monetary policy. It has failed to do that. I bought my first bitcoins coming into the MtGox bubble in November 2013, at bubble prices. I lost those in MtGox bankruptcy and bought more. I remained faithful to Bitcoin through all of 2014, 2015, 2016 and most of this year. But I finally gave in and sold at 2700 before the BCH fork. I've missed out on BCH, and giant BTC price gains since I sold. But damn. Strict monetary policy is just gone. I don't know if or when I will ever buy what crypto again. I love what they can do. But Bitcoin... ye had one job. And you blew it! I think there's a fair chance the total BTC/BCH price will fall back through my sell level again. Not sure I will want it, though.

You make my point perfectly. If you can mine litecoins "easier" than bitcoins then litecoins are overpriced. The model of dumping overpriced coins on an exchange for a better value only works if you can find dumb buyers... oh I see your point.

Litecoin abuses its faithful until they lose too many of their bitcoins and end up hating it. I cannot stress this enough. It is NOT an investment. It's a scheme to hope for a pump and dump to win bitcoins, that's it. And before the next pump ever happens, you WILL lose in what I call the long take, or the long dump. You do not know how low Litecoin will go, unless you are an insider pump and dump and dump and dump schemer. They finally made me hate them and dump my Litecoins after being a believer.

Are they going to run another pump and dump (and dump and dump)? Or just dump forever? I don't know. You don't know. THEY know, and they will win either way. I say, they win even if they just dump forever after this.

Another pump, when there is so much pressure to dump that coin if it ever goes up again? Maybe. But I wouldn't put very many bitcoins into the prospect. It's THEIR scheme, not yours. They WILL win either way. And somebody has to lose. If you are not the scheming insider, guess which you will be. My recommendation, for a million reasons, STAY AWAY from Litecoin forever. Or risk a tiny amount of your bitcoins if you want to test your "trading" smarts.

The only way Litecoin can ever be an "investment" worth your hard earned bitcoins is if it will go up from here for sure, and never lower. Erase your "hope" for what it will do and ask yourself, what would you do if you were running the scheme? Sooner or later that shit will go down way below where it is now. You can never let the masses guess the bottom in a trading scheme.

The hell of it is, now that they've dumped guys like me who used to be the faithful, they can indeed do their next pump if they want to. But they don't have to! Fair warning. They still win if Litecoin goes down forever. They can sell the worthless things by the millions until the hopers catch on they've been conned by the oldest con in the books.

"Give us all your bitcoins, you'll win like 10 times them back!"

That my friends, is con 101. Yeah, maybe... but they win even if the next big pump NEVER happens.

For litecoins to be an investment, they MUST retain a minimum value in bitcoins.

To be honest, if I were a Litecoin "insider" I would want that to happen. Litecoin retains real value forever, and really is the silver to Bitcoin's gold.

But these guys are way smarter and meaner than me. Good luck if you buy in. I highly recommend you think carefully about how much of your bitcoins you're willing to give them.

Testnet can be overcome pretty easily with a single ASIC according to Greg Maxwell.

I seriously always thought coblee on btc-e was Charlie. You are telling us that is not? Coblee on btc-e most definitely claimed to move 200 BTC to the exchange and buy LTC with it. Note "coblee" did this  when Litecoin was over $5. And on dump day it fell below $5 and has not recovered to this day.

http://trollboxarchive.com/quote/150705802

Here is "coblee" claiming he had no idea the moon graphic for Coinbase Exchange would be a pump.

http://trollboxarchive.com/quote/148067520

This sounds like the real Charlie Lee to me, and I've never heard any doubt hold up on btc-e that coblee is Charlie. But if he's not, please set us straight. That guy should be busted big time for claiming to be Charlie:

http://trollboxarchive.com/quote/71262020

Also, I think @SatoshiLite is Charlie on Twitter. Those two accounts are independently associated with the July pump. The timing can only be described as devastatingly perfect. This is not a claim that anyone did the pump and dump single handedly. Just that those two accounts were most definitely involved.

Yeah, so he announced a buy of maybe 10 thousand coins on btc-e and at least 3 million coins were dumped there in the first two days of the dump. But the dump is still ongoing . . .

Ha, I rechecked Charlie Lee's retweet of BTCDrak's tweet, "Gentlemen, it's time."

https://twitter.com/btcdrak/status/619217838256091140

That was at the HEIGHT of the pump, around noon my time, and I went to bed that night thinking I was doing great in Litecoin, as I had bought below .007 and it was over .032 that day. Pretty dumb and gullible of me, I know. To believe Litecoins were worth over $9 . . .

Sometime shortly after 1am pacific that night it crashed. Hard. Wee hours of the USA morning.

Charlie Lee is a pump and dumper. Let him pretend he is not. But this is only one example. The Coinbase Exchange Bitcoin pump and dump is another I won't describe. But Charlie Lee is of course the Coinbase "Chief Engineer".

Now that I am done trading forever, I did my books and to my surprise, my total trading record is only slightly below break-even, for all original purchases and trades of both Bitcoin and Litecoin. Close to 1 % losses. The particular incident here was a gain for me, but only after I stupidly held on to .01 ltc/btc. None of this counts my original first coins, stolen on Mt Gox. RIP.

For trading, I'm near break-even in Bitcoin, the best and in my opinion only coin, and I'm down 32 % in USD for the two years, which would be the case had I not traded at all.

I was a noob at trading, but learned a lot. Biggest thing I learned was it could have been far better, and it could have been far worse, but in general I played fairly carefully against a rigged house, and had small losses and a hell of a ride.

And Litecoins aint worth shit, and never will be. Bitcoins all the way, HODL all the way.

Have a great holiday season, everyone. Happy Bitcoin HODLing.

Can the same things be said of Bitcoin? Yes, but with some important distinctions for those of us who like Satoshi's original idea.

It can be, and has been, pumped and dumped, and Charlie Lee is again implicated in at least one of those, the Coinbase Exchange pump and dump. Without a doubt the best advice for most of us regular people, is DO NOT TRADE. Buy 'em if you want 'em long term. That is called being a strong hand. Take delivery and keep them.

If you didn't trade, then in five years you will still have most of your bitcoins that you have now. And have yet to pay any tax at all on them, as they are not taxable until you spend OR TRADE them.

In five years, I believe your bitcoins will be worth a lot. Your litecoins will be still trying to ride Bitcoin's coat tails, or be dead. Here's to pushing it off that cliff, the sooner the better.

Charlie Lee says Litecoin is not a "pump and dump". But Charlie Lee is a stone cold liar. He pumped Litecoins in the last MOOON (in July 2015) by retweeting "It's time, gentlemen."

And Litecoin went crazy, and was dumped, and is now lower (in bitcoin terms) than it was before that pump.

Look at the last two years. Litecoin IS a pump and dump. How do you know the next stop for Litecoin isn't .004, or .001, or .0001?

You don't. And how do you know the next MOOOON is coming?

You don't.

But if it does, get ready to DUMP.

Be a strong hand. Hold the coin you believe is best in the long run. Never sell it (unless you have a reason to spend it), just buy more when they are low. DON'T trust in a "trading" coin. It's designed to take from you, not give to you. And even if you do win, you will trigger the tax man to be very interested in you after you sold at the top.

Buy and hold bitcoins, don't sell unless you are spending, and the tax man (mostly) leaves you alone.

Oh, also, why bitcoin is better than litecoin: It actually does the MOST work by far for the cheapest price. And it aims to always do so. It's the most decentralized (though it needs to be far more decentralized) and has a mining industry that is alive and well.

Strong hands buy and hold bitcoins, and let Litecoins trick someone else. Strong hands don't mind when bitcoin falls in price, they just buy more. They do mind when litecoin takes their bitcoins, because they know that litecoins are really only for getting more bitcoins. But that can't work for everyone, can it?

I am mad at Litecoin tricksters and won't play anymore. I traded in them for nearly two years and every time I believed in them they took my bitcoins. EVERY time. I often got more Litecoins, accumulated them pretty good, and by the time they hit under $2 again (think about that, that's a terrible price for them to fall back to, Litecoins are NOT an investment) I bought a bunch, sold because scared, they started an inexplicable climb and I bought back in far fewer but still with (after terrible trading losses and some gains in both coins over the year) more than double the litecoins than I could buy last year the first time they killed me.

So, less bitcoins, less USD in a falling market from all this trading and even when I made a couple of spectacular moves that won me more bitcoins than I had ever had in Jan 2015 (fool trader who can't guess the bottom, I lost every bit of that win looking for a further bottom that never came).

But MORE litecoins. Litecoin could still make me a winner! And it was BEFORE the July pump! I'm set, right? WRONG. When litecoins went up to over $9 in July 2015 I would have been set, had I KNOWN TO DUMP. That's right, I thought just maybe litecoins were actually worth $9 because halving day was coming, the block size debate was on in Bitcoin, and litecoins had been this price before. Surely this time they could hold that price.

And this is NOT how to think of litecoins. NEVER believe in this coin as a hold, it is a dump if you got 'em.

SO, the big dump comes before I can think to get rid of my litecoins, suddenly I am still doing okay but I've missed the "big opportunity" that only came to those smart enough to dump millions of litecoins.

I held them, even after the dump, as they went down and down, and then fell flat in the next bitcoin pump to 500.

I recently dumped them. Because I bought at under $2, I was still ahead for 2015. BUT my one (everyone's one)  big opportunity for 2015 was LOST. And that is that. You had to know, Litecoin would not do the same trick twice, and litecoins is a dumpcoin, no matter what you want it to be.

Yeah, litecoin will probably last forever, because there will always be new noobs. BUT, if you are waiting for the big MOOON pump like 2013, you are a fool. Litecoin will almost certainly pull a different trick and you will not win unless you are an insider.

Yeah, it can fall back to .004 bitcoins and look like a GREAT BUY before the next MOOOOON. But Litecoin tricksters are not into giving away the bitcoins they got from the previous crops of noobs. If I were a stakeholder taking bitcoins, I would have a different trick ready. Just saying.

Hey, they got me to finally hate them. So they can safely crash them super low again and I won't buy. Probably means they got me again as the next pump really might happen.

Fuck that. I learned a few things over the last two years as a noob in a bear market. I got bitcoins stolen from Mt Gox, and I bought far more back than were stolen, because the price crashed so far for so long. Good.

I learned what a strong hand and a weak hand are.

A strong hand is buy and hold the thing you believe in. A weak hand is sell if you are just trying to win something else than the thing you bought, and you think the thing you bought might go down.

I made the mistake of trying to be a strong hand in Litecoin. But Litecoin is a DUMP coin. NO ONE should be a strong hand in it, unless they hold so many litecoins (cough *like some do* cough) that they can never sell them all at any price. That gives you a strong hand to hold while they go down 98% in value over two years and you slowly sell a bunch off to noobs who can never hope to keep the value they thought they bought.

I do not doubt that there is a new batch of high stakeholders in Litecoin, who, as long as they can keep people saying there is some merit to Litecoin, they can keep selling the litecoins and making the only real coin, which in the long run will be Bitcoin.

But a MOOON pump? If it happens, you better be quicker than all the other burned die-hards to DUMP. You just saw maybe the last MOOON, in July 2015. And maybe, like me, you were too busy admiring it to DUMP in time.

Why buy-and-hold the best coin is better than trading:

Buy and hold bitcoins, and you can ride out a two or more year bear market by buying more (if you believe in it, as I do). So if the market goes down, you get more bitcoins. Also, if the market goes up, and you hold, you owe taxes only on the (hopefully) small percentage you actually spend. The ones you continue to hold cause no tax headaches.

Trade bitcoins against dollars, and pay taxes on your sell at what you hope is the top. Good luck with that possibly massive loss of trading gains to the tax man. Good luck hoping bitcoins go back down again so you can "buy back even more."

Trade bitcoins against Litecoins or some other copy/alt, and you should probably be a smart insider. If you are, I'm sure you're laughing at this post. If you are like most of us, and not an insider, plan on guessing wrong a lot, and owing massive tax bills on any gains. More likely, plan on losses you can't claim all in one year (capped at 3000 USD in US).

Buy Litecoins and jump for joy if the price spikes massively better than bitcoin. Then either cry as they go down inevitably (to trade like "silver to Bitcoin's gold"), or dump them and then you are a trader paying taxes on all your coins. Headache at best, but maybe you're richer. That's the hook that gets you to buy (SOON, before the next MOON). But wait -- what if there is no MOON for Litecoin next time? Here's what I've learned trading Litecoin in 2014 and 2015. Trading NEVER goes the "obvious" way it "should". Well, hardly ever.

Bitcoins are adding value to the world, and I believe are worth buying and holding and buying more even as the price goes down, because in the long run, they will prove a good store of value. And maybe go up.

But trading them in large (whatever "large" means to you) quantities? I've tried it for two years, with most of my small amount of savings, trying to sell in a bear market, and invest in litecoins, and DUMP litecoins, and guess the bottoms. Best thing I can say about it is I learned to quit that before any massive price gains come. If they do come, the tax consequences of trading all of your coins would be a massive loss to taxes and could easily turn all your gains to losses.

I'm glad I learned a lot about trading, but it cost me. With the same investment, and even though I paid no taxes (due to I don't have massive amounts of coins and they didn't go up in value), I would have been better off to just buy with the same fiat, as I had it, and hold.

I would have more bitcoins today had I never sold in a bear market or bought litecoins. Guessing price movements is tough! I didn't guess better than chance.

Skip the next litecoin MOOON pump? Yes please. I don't believe I can get that right, even if one happens.

Buy and hold more bitcoins? Yes please. And if we have another price spike, and I become sure they are going to go down again... I will know better than to sell.

That's the benefit of two years of experience as a noob "trader".

Litecoin is a trading scheme that takes advantage of noobs and collects their bitcoins for the litecoin trading whales who plan the prices in advance. Litecoin price makes absolutely NO sense from a technical standpoint and is often underpriced and still going down, or massively overpriced and still spiking. The scheme is to get more bitcoins for the litecoin insiders, that is all. Will Litecoin be around forever? Maybe, because noobs will be around forever and trading schemes can be changed up to suit the new batch of green buyers. Why did Litecoin spike in July but fall flat in November with the same Bitcoin fluctuation? You can scan the news and do technical analysis and look at the halving day, but none of these give the answer. It wasn't a secretive Chinese Ponzi group. It was massive price setting by Litecoin and Bitcoin stake holders who hold ridiculous millions of litecoins and are scattering and collecting them on their own price schedule, raking in bitcoins both directions. Will the next Litecoin pump make you rich? Maybe, but you had better be quick at dumping if you are holding litecoins in a price spike. The quicker you are to dump litecoins, the "smarter" trader you are.

Bitcoins also are price set of course. But Bitcoin is the innovator, Bitcoin piles massive amounts of proof of work at the highest efficiencies for the price, making it the ONLY proof of work coin that will be worth holding, and Bitcoin's price manipulations are one fifth the magnitude of Litecoin's, making it far less of a con. Also, Bitcoin means to (and does) add value to the world. Litecoin means to try its best to ride that success mainly by grabbing bitcoins from noobs. It actually adds nothing.

By all means, if you want to play against the Litecoin whales, trade in Litecoin. But never trade your whole stake. If both Bitcoin and Litecoin go way up from here (it will be a first time for me) then selling all of either coin will trigger a massive tax consequence. Suppose that Litecoin trade doesn't make you double your money, but only say 20 percent. Then watch out! You probably owe the tax man 30 percent or more of all your money.

You can hope to make massive gains (5x or more over Bitcoin) timed just right for the tax man, as the boom of 2013 was, but yeah maybe not next time? Who knows. Tricksters don't always pull the same tricks twice.

Smartest move if you are going to play is buy some while they are cheap (like maybe now, maybe not) and then hold 'em in the hopes that the bottoms will do as well or slightly better than Bitcoin. Hint - they probably won't. But if you buy low, then you can maybe sell a few here and there when they are high (IF they ever are again, which admittedly may happen), only as much as you intend to actually spend at a handsome gain over Bitcoins at that moment.

But even that may not hold. Litecoin has no (or maybe one) ASIC in production any more. All the projects were cancelled. And if Litecoin dies as a coin, because people recognize it as a trading scheme based on the greed of noobs against the greed of smart insiders, done on a coin with a dying or dead mining industry... all bets may be off. The whales have enough coins to sell them forever to greedy losers until the death becomes painfully obvious to the last losers. Kind of like the Mount Gox of coins, it would be then.

Remember that Litecoin's purpose (now that it is trading in silver/gold ratios already with Bitcoin) is to make Bitcoins off the other guy. It's either a zero sum game (likely, in which case insiders win and the rest of us lose), or a nonzero sum growth for all (NOT likely at all from where we are now), or a loss for all bagholders forever (also very likely and don't let the bagholder be you).

Litecoin does not add 3 percent or 10 percent or 40 percent value to the proof-of-work world by issuing a copy coin. It very well may just prove why copy coins forever after are failures.

It's pretty clear from the posted writings that Satoshi put the 1MB block limit in place to prevent certain attacks on the very early block chain technology. He made it clear he never meant that limit to remain in place. The people who argue we must not increase the block size are fearful that a hard fork could result in disaster. But this need not be the case. It should be possible to hard fork for the good of the technology.

Specifically, new versions of Bitcoin should accept blocks legitimately mined by the old version, but of course old versions may reject blocks mined be the new version.

This means that if less than half the miners ever accept a forked version of Bitcoin, then the old version will win and even the new version miners will accept the old style blocks, no fork occurs.

On the other hand if more than half the mining power accepts a new forked version of Bitcoin, then we have a hard fork on our hands, and old versions may continue mining an alternate chain indefinitely, while claiming to be the one and only true Bitcoin.

The question is, what happens to these old version miners in the long run?

I argue they must be reduced to irrelevancy rather quickly, and here is why. Demand for block chain usage will only increase over time. The 1MB limit could only work in the very earliest times of Bitcoin. Eventually (and hopefully only after a successful fork), demand will pour over into the new Bitcoin fork, or if it has never been made then demand will pour over into Litecoin, which already can handle four times the number of transactions as Bitcoin can. So, without a hard fork, Litecoin becomes four times the market cap of Bitcoin as soon as demand outstrips the 1MB block limit.

So, it's fork or die for Bitcoin, as Satoshi well understood when he put the limit in place on the baby block chain.

Bitcoin is designed to justify its value by bringing real, new value into the world. That real, new value is access to the Byzantine block chain. Bitcoin must make it as available as the demand, or its own clones will kill it.

Yes, continuing to buy is a good idea. Bitcoins may go down again. But bitcoiners believe that this just means we can buy even more of them with the same amount of money. They may go up, and in that case bitcoiners believe they were smart to buy before the rise. Either way, most of us would recommend to buy and hold, and don't be sad about the downturns. Just buy more.