OK... so, a hypothetical "investor" has 10 BTC "invested" at scrypt.cc. Every time they withdraw their money - sorry, some of their money because they're not allowed to withdraw all of their money - they pay a withdrawal fee, correct? And that withdrawal fee is 0.01 BTC also correct?

So in order to <ahem> "recover" the withdrawal fee that's just eaten away at their meagre withdrawal - they'll need to make another withdrawal. Which also will be subject to a withdrawal fee. Lemme guess, they should then attempt yet another withdrawal. And all while the maximum permitted withdrawal is decreasing, and the proportion of withdrawals taken by scrypt.cc in the form of withdrawal fees is increasing.

Dumbasef, I think I liked you better when you dropped the facade of stupidity.

Dropping to $0? It won't happen.

A slow painful bear market drifting asymptotically towards $0? Now that's possible. Unlikely (IMO), but it is at least possible.

In order for a price to reach zero, there would have to be sellers who wish to sell - for $0.

If you were desperate to sell and the last sale was for $100 - would you try and sell at $90 - or $0?
If you were desperate to sell and the last sale was for $10 - would you try and sell at $9 - or $0?
If you were desperate to sell and the last sale was for $1 - would you try and sell at $0.90 - or $0?
If you were desperate to sell and the last sale was for 10c - would you try and sell at 9c - or $0?

Given a choice between zero and a positive non-zero value - any rational seller is going to sell at the positive non-zero value. No rational seller is going to give BTC away.

Why don't you track down the name and address, and meantime people could follow D4RK5T4R's PSA and report this as a crime?

Any news on getting your money back without it being swallowed up by withdrawal fees? Butter and honey don't taste as good if someone has taken a large taste before you...

All the miners in the world will be marginally 50% less effective. But their mining equipment will have been purchased before the block reward reduction, and they will take the overall cost of production into account - which will vary by miner, and by mining gear. Consider a hypothetical sole miner with one solitary ASIC - they purchased it in November 2014, and it reached ROI in October 2015. Their concerns are now the cost of electricity - as difficulty increases will the 12.5 BTC they receive per block cover the cost of the electricity they use in the (lengthening) period of time it takes them to find a block? Contrast that with another (also hypothetical) miner with the same ASIC, but purchased later, in Summer 2015, say. They haven't reached ROI, and need to consider amortisation of the ASIC's purchase cost as well as difficulty and electricity costs.

My point is that this is a calculation that deals with the overall cost of production, i.e. the cost over the life-time of their mining gear. Looking solely at marginal production costs is not what sensible miners are doing. They have a pretty good idea how much they need to sell their BTC for, over the life-time of their mining gear.

I'm not sure why anyone would believe that difficulty would fall 50%, that's just bizarre. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a reduction in difficulty post-halving, but I'd expect it to be consistent with previous reductions (in size and duration).

I'm not convinced you've read the OP's actual post...

I suspect your guesstimate for production costs is incorrect, but perhaps more importantly - production costs vary with producer. A large miner in China may well have lower production costs than a small miner in Arkansan. A miner who invested several years ago in solar power will have amortised that fixed cost over several years. A miner reliant on the local electricity generation company will be looking at ongoing and possibly increasing variable costs.

When people say "the halving is priced in" what they mean is - traders know the block reward reduction is going to happen. So do miners. The halving isn't going to take most people by surprise. Most traders selling BTC now are aware of the impending block reward reduction, and will trade accordingly - and that includes taking into account the reduced supply of BTC post-halving (i.e. in the future). Miners make decisions in advance - they decide to purchase mining gear in full knowledge that the return from that new equipment will almost certainly diminish over time (due to difficulty increasing) and that there will certainly be a 50% reduction some time later this year. They'll have been selling the coins they generate while being aware of all this, and hoping to cover their costs and make a profit over time, specifically over the lifetime of their mining equipment.

When the block reward reduction happens, we won't see miners or traders being caught out. They knew the halving was going to happen, and they've been targeting what they consider to be a good price - taking what they know will happen into account.

This doesn't mean that nearly 4 years ago price increased dramatically to reflect the 2016 halving - the relevance of the halving to price obviously increases as halving approaches. But equally it doesn't mean that the halving will, in and of itself, cause price to dramatically increase. Any dramatic increase is far more likely to (a) be caused by less sophisticated traders hoping to trade off "FOMO" ("fear of missing out" - i.e. when the price goes up they worry it'll continue to go up, and buy in too late), and (b) be short-lived.

What is "very high" and which use cases would this apply to?

For example - I want to purchase something online costing $500. I purchase $500's worth of BTC, and send the BTC to the vendor.

Another example - I wish to transfer CHF 2000 from Zurich to Singapore. I purchase CHF 2000's worth of BTC, and send it to the Bitcoin address given to me by my Singaporean bank.

Neither of these two examples seem to rely on BTC being "low" or "high" (they don't seem to be dependent on the BTC/USD or BTC/CHF rate at all). So what is "very high", and when does it become an issue?

Low compared to what? Low compared to an exceptional ATH, or - much more realistically - low compared to its price over the last 7 years, or even low compared to its price last year? Because apart from that first example (the ATH) I'm not seeing how people could regard >$400 as low - we spent 2015 ranging between ~$200 and ~$300. The highest we've been in the past year is 20% higher than the current price. Where does this idea that the price is low come from? Without some sort of comparison describing the current price as "low" just seems bizarre.

Roughly 22 weeks from now.

(More precisely, once a miner generates the 420,000th block, and we're currently at 398,096 blocks).

Do you mean the next 2 days, the coming weekend? Check the OP - $400 did survive the weekend, and the one after that too! It didn't fall below $400 until mid-January.

This ... seems ... to ... be ... a recurring ... theme.

I'm not seeing this "fact". The price is higher than it was throughout most of 2015, higher than it's been on average since 2009. What am I missing?

Ah, my mistake. It sounds like this is the "opening up in a big way" ("Update: Launched in the USA, free USD & CAD deposits"), following the Coinsetter acquisition, but due to a (new?) relationship with SynapsePay.

Kraken's just started USD as well, though I don't know (don't have an account) whether ETH/USD trading is possible yet.

This ... seems ... to ... be ... a recurring ... theme.

I'm not seeing this "fact". The price is higher than it was throughout most of 2015, higher than it's been on average since 2009. What am I missing?

This ... seems ... to ... be ... a recurring ... theme.

I'm not seeing this "fact". The price is higher than it was throughout most of 2015, higher than it's been on average since 2009. What am I missing?

You would think wrong (are you just looking at the USD exchanges, and ignoring Huobi, the subject of this thread?)

The price on Huobi (and on OKCoin) is ~ CNY 2602. That's ~ USD 395.

If Alice bought 1 BTC at $800 in late 2013 she'd have made a paper-loss of around $400. The second she sells her 1 BTC she's realised that loss, and incurred a loss of $400 - she had $800, now she has $400.

If Bob bought 1 BTC at $200 in early 2015 he'd have now made a paper-profit of around $200. The second he sells his 1 BTC he's realised that profit, and gained $200 - he had $200, now he has $400.

So no, a good price to sell for me is not necessarily a good price to sell for anyone else. In general people try and buy low, sell high. Someone who bought at $800 in late 2013 would probably not regard now as a good time to sell, unless they needed fiat too badly to wait for the price to improve.

I keep seeing variations on this claim, "in fact the price is low", etc. What fact is this? The price is higher than it was throughout most of 2015, higher than it's been throughout most of BTC's history. I'm not pessimistic about the future, but I am curious about this "fact". Where does this "fact" come from?