Yes, gold is horrible as an investment. It is a hedge against inflation and that's it. Gold also tends to do well when the economy is doing poorly because more people fear a collapse of society and buy gold, thus driving up demand.

If you know what you are doing, you buy and sell gold with a flat fee per ounce (like $20 or so). There is no reason to pay 3% or more, you are getting ripped off. Real gold dealers operate on very thin margins because there is a lot of competition.

My real problem with gold is the way it is taxed in the US. Gold is ALWAYS taxed as a collectable, so it is taxed at 28% if you are a middle income person. There is no 15% long term capital gains rate for gold! Most people don't seem to realize this. A lot of states have their own tax too. For example, where I live in Massachusetts, you pay short term capital gains ALWAYS on gold, which is 12%. That is horrible! So you pay 12% state plus 28% fed for any appreciation on the gold you own when you sell it, no matter how long you've owned it.

Also, I believe gold is in a bubble now and is due for a correction. Maybe around $1000/ounce is more reasonable than the $1400-$1600 it's been recently.

In short, only buy gold with bitcoins if you are looking for a quick way to cash out your bitcoins and don't have a the highest level of verified mt gox account. Or maybe if you are trying to evade taxes on your bitcions, not that I'd ever recommend doing that. And even then, sell your gold right away once you get it.

Threw in $5k last november, and $5k more in january. It's worth like $120k now.

No, coinlab will let you though. I thinking shorting will be great for bitcoin as it will add a bit of stabilitiy to the price.

Bitcoin, you may not be a lot of things but one thing you are not, is boring.

I can't wait until coinlab is up and running so that we will be able to short bitcoins.

It will do a lot for reducing volatility and provide a cushion for these insane crashes we've been seeing.

no, looks like someone just bought a buttload of bitocoins. back up to 155 now.

I mean the past 3 hours, not in general.


And the value of bitcoin is not just in it's use as currency. I'm not sure if bitcoin will ever be useful as a currency.

Other than the relatively small black market, there is nothing you can buy with bitcoin that you can't buy with a credit card.

What is the advantage of spending a deflationary currency like bitcoin over an inflationary one like the dollar? The answer is you will always want to spend the dollars over the bitcoins and horde the bitcoins because the bitcoins increase in value while the dollars don't.

The lack of credit card fees is not reason alone that bitcoin is worthwhile.

Bitcoins are more useful as a store of value such as gold presently. That gives it real value right now.

Makes sense. I agree with everything written here.

It's hard for me because I am a long-term investor here (bought the vast majority of my coins at ~$10 and haven't sold) yet I watch the ticker like a day trader.

Up to a max of about $166 today a noon EDT and now down to $145 just 3 hours later.

Is it market manipulation?

Volatility cause by lack of liquidity? One big order drove the price way up and now it's dropping back to where it was yesterday?

Or did people just panic when they saw how fast it was rising and remember the bubble from 2 weeks ago?

What do you think is going on?

NoHo is a neighborhood in Manhattan. Manhattan is an island that is a part of New York City.

NoHo is short for "North of Houston Street" just like SoHo is short for "South of Houston Street".

And it's pronounced like House-ton, not like the city in Texas. Siri doesn't seem to know that.

Everyone who read about bitcoin in the news when it crashed a few weeks ago and decided to sign up for mt gox and decided, "what the hell, I'll buy a couple coins". They just got their mtgox account verified and transferred money up to the exchange.

I still get excited every dollar it goes up.

GPU mining will be completely dead within 3 months. For bitcoin at least. The alt currencies might be worthwhile to mine for but I predict their value is going to stay very low.

GPU mining will die because ASICs are an order of magnitude faster and use less power too. GPU will consume more electricity that they could ever hope to make back mining. We will see difficulties I'm the hundreds of millions. Do the math and see that GPU mining is doomed.

Shorting does not reduce the price at all. It simply reduces volatility. And for bitcoin, that is a good thing.

I'm a twink and proud!


Wait, wrong forums...

The difference is weather forecasting is actually science. Weather forecasting isn't always right but there are provable weather patterns and theories and on average it is much better than randomly guessing sunny/cloudy/rain/snow. This has not yet shown to be true for TA in a scientific way.

So we understand that "Correlation does not imply causation." but we still believe in technical analysis. Makes no sense to me.

That is not a valid comparison because bitcoin mining ASICs are ONLY useful for mining bitcoins. Therefore they will remain a specialty chip and their price will not drop as much as you believe. CPUs and GPUs are commodities with many uses. In fact, ASIC prices will go up as the price of bitcoins go up and mining becomes more profitable. Furthermore, faster and faster ASICs that consume less power will continually be developed and a miner is going to have to reinvest every year or two in order to keep up. The continual purchase of new mining hardware will be a bigger expense than electricity is today.

Good that realize that TA is pretty much total BS. I'm skeptical of your new methods too though. Bitcoin is far too small of a market for any mathematical technique to be of any use right now.

You can't do fundamental analysis on bitcoin presently. And TA is all voodoo. Best to go on the psychology of people who are buying it.