I was, it feels very similar, and that price just does not seem to want to go any lower... Something gonna give

here have this one!

Decline has slowed. Price is going sideways & choppy. Bottom is in. Reversal imminent! Have faith brother

And if it goes lower, it goes lower. NM

LOLWUT

It would be interesting to see if the mere depositing of millions of dollars at the exchange triggered a mysterious unexplained rally

One for the conspiracy crowd there!

OTC trades?

I think that last point is a lot more significant right now than one might think at first glance. Will be interesting to see how it unfolds!

Newsflash. We are visiting it now. Hence the title "crunch time". Do keep up!

If you pay attention you'll see I haven't said anything about what's going to happen just shared some speculation about what has happened.

Trolls are becoming so rabid that they don't even read before shouting you down  

I don't trade, so I don't do a lot of what folks would probably call TA, but I do think that past price can give you some information about market participants psychology.

In the past each run up has typically been followed by a period of bottom discovery. A process which seems to be unfolding again. This is my take on whats been going on.

1. Profit taking

The ATH is in, when panic buying is finally overtaken by profit taking. This first big move usually sets the ball park for where the bottom will eventually be and this time looks to be no exception. We had three ("dead cat") bounces in december, each making lower lows. The final one we settled into the long steady decline which seeks to discover base support. This looked to have been found mid april with a capitulation sell to mid 360s. Bottom fishers pushed the price back up but the major downtrend was not ready to resolve until mid may.

2. Attempted break out

The triangle resolved, and we broke out to the upside, there wasn't really enough volume to support this move though, and as it ran out of steam we resumed the downtrend.

3. Continuation

The unconvincing breakout says to me that there was still plenty of downside left unexplored. Although we had visited lows a few months prior, the euphoria of the previous ATH lingered and sentiment was never really that bad. There was nothing like the deluge of "bitcoin is doomed" posts we are seeing now. I think thing that niggled at people's minds was the big question mark over whether the April low was really the bottom?

4. Unconfirmed

The only way to surely know something is to test it, and the market demands answers. I think we have to revisit that low and test it conclusively. We need to do it whilst sentiment is at a low (unlike in april, where false hope may have terminated the capitulation early?) only then will the market have decided whether we need to test new lows, or whether it is happy that mid 360s is a bad is it will get.

Reserve me a glass

Are you going to do it by running through every shop yelling overconfident opinions framed as fact in IRL all caps? For no other reason than to prove how smrt u is?

Can we expect you to learn? Because your posts don't show that.
Can we expect you to earn? Because your fear doesn't show that.

Every run up confirms adoption, cyclical behaviour. Every correction to higher lows shows support.

Do you even lift?

You are really bad at this. You just keep demonstrating how poorly you reason, you really think buying bitcoin is like buying a lottery ticket?

I'd be intrigued to see your investment portfolio. 100% cash in the mattress??

You think of rebalancing fiat/BTC ratio as 'winnings'? Tell me, if you started with 1% of your assets in BTC, which by your very own claims is a hugely risky asset class, then due to appreciation discover that you are well over 50% invested. Would you advise that I not reduce my exposure to BTC?

It's interesting that of late, any suggestions of rational actions are being met with increasingly hostile, infuriated and hyperbolic assertions that suggest instead taking an incredibly reckless course of action, based on nothing other than price action.

None of the bears on here can give a credible reason as to why selling everything is truly the best course of action. Essentially every post they make is "please don't sell your dollars, buy dollars, no please prop up the dollar price, NO PLEEEEZE SALE ALLZ UR BITCHCOINZ".

Smells fishy to me.

As ever I continue to maintain, that you should not buy bitcoin except with money you can afford to lose.

Agree. What I don't see is how people that buy snake oil always blame the oil, or the salesman, or the poor oiled snake.

As it happens I believe a lost of what Risto says about long term trend lines (you are familiar with the 560k thread yes ?) and thus I am hedged in case that happens. Which is a quite different thing to gambling everything for if that happens. Risto is not to blame. People and their own greed is to blame.

Also, i wouldn't say the BTC at gox don't concern me. I rue their loss. I am incensed. I would be much better off with them!

Thing is that gets me nowhere, so I accept the loss and move on.

Thanks very kind of you, and quite different from some of the opinions posted by people far smarter than me about how it was a stupid gamble.

I assumed a return of 10-20 cents on the dollar, and averaged down to just over 5 cents on the dollar. It was a calculated risk, with plenty of upside, a bit of downside, and I didn't go all on. Just one of many opportunities that presents itself in life. This one might pay, or it might not.

You are of course right. Market is never binary, buyers and sellers at every level, and thats what drives price action. Not some imaginary bogey man selling all the coins at whatever price until $0 because... FEAR

You're short sighted 'trader' view is becoming increasingly more vapid.

1. If I buy coins today, and then panic sell tomorrow when bitcoin hits $360, then yes I will have 6% less fiat.

2. If I buy coins today, and then panic sell in 4 weeks time when bitcoin hits $200 then I will have 50% less fiat.

3. If I buy coins today, and bitcoin goes KABOOM I will have lost 100% of my fiat invested.

There is *no point* selling BTC for less than what you bought them, I'm not here to increase my fiat by buying BTC cheap and selling them for more, because I don't have some misplaced belief that I am prescient.

I have enough fiat, I have a regular income. My life is satisfactory. So I can say with 100% confidence that #1 and #2 aren't going to happen.

If the third scenario plays out, then sure enough - you were right! What's the likelihood of that happening though? I think we have very different risk profiles in this regard. Yours seems to be based on the strongest of all emotions, the emotion most likely to drive man to insanity, the one that so powerful it cause you to do stupid shit like posting all caps on the internet about how big your e-peen is oblivious to the fact that doing so will not make you rich, get you a girl or save the entire planet.

I will lose and you can point and laugh, and I will carry on making my regular income, having my satisfactory life, confident that I made the right choices at the time given the available information to me. I will reflect on what an interesting experiment bitcoin was and what a fascinating experience I had, and how lucky I was to live through such a phenomenon.

Now to rule out the unmentioned option 4 you are going to have to disregard, millions of people interested in seeing BTC succeed, millions (billions?) of dollars of investment in BTC infrastructure, A global economy that is safe and stable enough that nothing can perturb it and that the human proclivity to advance just ceases.

Option 4 is that bitcoin succeeds. The actual price is irrelevant because dollars/pounds/sheckles are what you convert BTC to locally. Your wealth is measured by what percentage of total BTC you have. It seems this concept is lost on you though, because the only thing you see is the market price of bitcoin right now which on your head translates as "OMG YOU LOST MONEHS"

I've been holding BRK.B for some time now, and for a long time I had 'lost money' on that, had I sold I would in fact have lost money. I didn't right now its up, I could sell and make money. I prefer to hold. I think Berkshire can probably put that money to better use than I can. I also held AAPL during the $700 peak. I continued to hold it through the death of jobs, and the supposed failure of the company. Its taken a year (which is actually a pretty short time really) thats 365 days of opportunity to sell at a loss. Here we are right back were we started, at the supposedly untenable high that prompted the sell off. Traders see lines on charts. I see free cash flow through the roof, massive margins, an absolutely staggering cash moat. Zero debt. A company that was turned around by jobs yes, but not so stupid as not to remember the lessons steve taught them. And that dividend....


Anyway. The point is, price is the worst possible indicator of value. There is no chart you can look at to ascertain value. Price is only good for judging sentiment, and as any fool knows the best price corresponds with the worst sentiment. Your fear blinds you to the obvious, your greed cages you from opportunity. You lack reasoning. You lack insight. You lack coherency.

If I am wrong, than anyone with an ounce of reading comprehension and reasoning skills could read what I have posted and see why I though like I did. If you are wrong people will continue to think, as they do know, "what is this guy talking about".

Seriously. Give us better than "omg you will lose money because the price is going down". Treat us to a morsel more insight. I'd love to hear a really rational bear case that doesn't just gloss over everything that is happening right now in bitcoin world.

It's irregular, bank fees dictate I do it lumpy ~€1000 at a time, whenever things look bleak

Paul maud'dib called, said to let you know there is only one kwisatz haderach