Welcome back. Hope you didn't miss the train up... it was a pretty sweet ride (for a while).

No, I understood your (and wachtwoord's) point just fine. I'll try to sharpen mine:

Quote WP: "... unit of account allows meaningful interpretation of prices, costs, and profits"

I understand that, in principle, our little distributed global ledger could serve as a brilliantly useful unit of account. Many of the necessary aspects (transparent, tamper proof) are there. But to allow a "meaningful interpretation of prices/costs", you cannot -- for now -- go through the ledger alone. You will need another point of reference (commonly: USD), if the time horizon is longer than a few seconds.

We probably agree that Bitcoin has the potential to become maybe /the/ unit of account eventually, but for as long as price swings wildly (and, despite what some claim, largely unpredictably on a long enough time span), it is not an actually usable unit of account without reference to another (more stable) asset.

Eventually, maybe. But it'll take a while. It'll take [period of initial clusterfuck speculation (you are HERE)], [approaching equilibrium], [period of price stability] and finally [monkey brains of young ones getting fully used to denominating value in Bitcoin]. Not something I count on happening in the next 5 or even 10 years.

(mildly drunk. bit more confrontative than usual. sorry)

Not by the widely used definition.

Why are we having this discussion? There are a whole lot of great things about Bitcoin. Price stability is not one of them. Except for a very select few zealots, nobody in his right mind would denominate the value of something he wants to sell or buy in Bitcoin primarily. It goes (and will do so for the foreseeable future) in the form of 'internal notion of value -> USD value -> XBT value'. And I don't see any problem with that.

Because many of us in the Bitcoin community are so habitually optimistic that they're bound to be disappointed?

This is not to say that we won't ever make $12 per day. At some point, that'll look like "careful growth". Just not now. Not after leaving (hopefully) a bone crushing bear market of half a year. Too many traders (count me into that group if you want) more than happy to take (still pretty specular) profits before letting it fly again.

Bit on the edge, aren't we.

The dollar won't "fall". Not in your lifetime at least. Or rather: if your investment decisions are based on the assumption that it will, your investment decision algorithm sucks.

That said, Bitcoin can be vastly successful without becoming a unit of account. Gold isn't one ("Hey, how much for those shoes?" "0.25 fine ounces of gold"), and Bitcoin doesn't need to become either.

Eh, sorry to rain on your parade guys, but in all honesty, the entire "should we talk abot bit or ubit or mBTC" discussion only matter if Bitcoin ever becomes a unit of account. And frankly, I don't see that happening for a long time yet. (I mean it: long time. A human generation, maybe).

And for the other aspects, exchange medium, store of wealth, it doesn't matter one bit (hur hur) what it's called... gold bugs had to wrap their head around the rather impractical 'ounces' for a while, and that never stopped adoption either.

What I'm saying is, discuss away how to call the fractions of a coin, but I tend to think, it won't matter either way.

I refuse to partake in such nons- ALL GLORY HYPNOJORGE!

Possible. The rising wedge you see is definitely an option, and (at conclusion) has a bearish bias. But:


...is kind of out there. To conclude that, based on your currently favored wave count, we're going up until late August, then will break down to a new correction low is a bit too speculative for my taste.

While I agree ^Jorge with you in _{Jorge Stolfi} principle, it is ^{Jorge Jorge Jorge} important to reme_{Jorge ^Stolfi}mber that we are morally obliged to JORGE JORGE JORGE

Agreed. I selectively respond to his posts if I find them interesting, but I gave up thinking of any exchange with him as a 'discussion' a while ago.


@TakeTheSkyRoad: very nice analogy (the 'garage full of people', I mean). Saved.

p0peji has a point. 'Selective arguing' is just as common (if not more) among the Bitcoin optimists in here as it is with the pessimists. The difference is context: this is a forum of people that, by and large, are (or at least once were) excited about Bitcoin. So the difference between 'troll' and 'not troll' is not whether you argue selectively, but if you do so in a context that puts you at odds with the majority of the other participants.

The other difference is intention. To be really called a troll, your goal has to be to get a rise out of the majority of those who hold an opinion contrary to yours.

I'd say point 1 applies to Jorge, but point 2 doesn't. I don't really believe his goal posting here is to incite anger (although he's probably amused by the reactions to a degree). I've said it before, but I think he actually has the misguided belief that he somehow has to convince us of the error of our ways.

Thanks, Cassius. Nearly 100% my own sentiment (although I hesitate to put a "very polite troll" into the same mental category as a regular, barely intelligible, run-of-the-mill troll... but that's a matter of taste I admit). Please note the unnecessary highlighted parts that I especially agree with :D

True. Chapter 2 of the book I linked to goes into that topic. Hint: not every reproducible effect is reproducible in the (rigorous, but  ultimately also extremely conservative) setting of an empirical study.

I used the analogy of chess opening theory in a discussion with Jorge in the wall thread a while ago: imagine you tried to formalize (and program) chess opening theory as a computer scientist, say 20 years ago. No chance. You would have (rightfully) dismissed it as "way too intuitionistic".

However, that doesn't mean that opening theory is worthless, as the practicing chess player well versed in it would have proven to you by kicking your poor alpha beta pruning machine's ass.


Note: the above does not mean everything that's not reproducible in a study is worth following. Homeopathy, cold fusion or denialist climate science come to mind...

Haha, I'm sure that won't be a problem. I just mentioned it to make clear that, to follow the book, you don't need a university degree in a field like math or physics, just basic mathematical maturity is enough. And if you're retired, you're definitely mature enough

It's somewhere in the middle, difficulty wise, I'd say...

You probably could, in principle, get most of the information from the book from web resources like Stochcharts - Chartschool, but the book is well organized, reliable, and covers a wide range of topics beside charts and indicators.

Then again, for someone who never traded before it's possibly a bit too technical (although the math required is nothing more than high school level). Depends on whether OP is serious about getting into TA (then the book is a good start), otherwise BabyPips is maybe more accessible.

Why are you guys arguing with a fake Jorge account, if I may ask?

I mean, arguing with the real Jorge is frustrating enough :P

Good book to start with, in my opinion:

http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Analysis-Complete-Financial-Technicians/dp/0137059442

And a discount for when it will happen.

Why? Google Translate + my own crude ability to read it, looks to me exactly like the heavily biased things he writes in here, only in the form of a monologue, but such is the life of a twitterer.